Automating "Le Mime et l’Étoile" – Puy du Fou
The latest addition to the famous European theme park Puy du Fou, tthe show “Le Mime et l’Étoile” gives voice to what we call “The belle époque“. During the early days of cinema, spectators saw the filming of a silent film taking place before their eyes.
A TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGE
In a 3,800 m² room built especially to host the show, human-scale sets, numerous machines, light, sound and video mapping coexist, all these elements combined make Mime et l'Etoile a real technical challenge. The first performances of this show, featuring complex scenography, began in April 2023, with up to eight performances a day. The automation project manager, Martin De Gaillard, explains that the main challenge for a production of this scale is tracking. Indeed, the show requires control-room automation to deliver a high-quality performance every time while limiting human intervention. In addition, given the number of operators working on the show, assigning characters to targets would have been too complicated. Furthermore, for operational reasons the show requires a reliable system with little maintenance as well a responsive support team that could address the show’s needs during the development phase.
K SYSTEM detects the positions of artists as soon as they enter the stage and sends them to third-party systems participating in the magic of the show.
For lighting, the data is sent to a grandMA console to provide automatic light monitoring. For sound, an L-ISA immersive sound system from L-Acoustics also receives 3D information, providing spatialised sound, which is essential to the immersive experience in this 2,000-seat auditorium.
K SYSTEM also sends this information to a Modulo Pi media server as well as to show control, a Medialon from 7thSense which communicates back to K SYSTEM in order to create scenarios based on the characters identified throughout the show using Eliko's UWB beacons.
Thanks to K SYSTEM, technicians no longer need to perform the tracking manually, which would be too expensive and impractical for such a complex show. he performers are now free to move, allowing the production to reflect Puy du Fou’s tradition of spectacular historical shows and breathtaking stage reconstructions.
