Spotrack -- Follow-Spotting for the Modern World at LDI 2016Spotrack, the innovative system that turns moving lights into followspots, allowing one human operator to follow a performer with up to twenty lights, will be on show in Las Vegas from October 21-23rd, as part of this year's LDI show. Spotrack will be found on booth 549, in a set-up that will allow visitors to try the system for themselves. Using a patented 3-D tracking system, Spotrack takes a full-stage image from a video camera and uses a two-point calibration system to teach Spotrack where each moving lights is. The human operator then uses a mouse, touchscreen, or other preferred control device to follow performers on-screen, with Spotrack directing the moving lights to that performer. There are no belt-packs for the performers to wear, no sensors to be rigged, and the system benefits from the human operator's skill and sense of anticipation while freeing them from the need to climb trusses or physically operate a big, heavy, hot light. Instead, the operator can be positioned anywhere, and can control from one to twenty moving lights -- any of which can go back to doing other things when not required as a followspot, giving lighting designers the maximum versatility from their rig. Proven on stage and television productions across Europe, Spotrack is now also performing nightly in London's West End as part of the Donmar at King's Cross Shakespeare Trilogy, where lighting designer James Farncombe is using four systems to allow four performers to be followed, in this case by up to four moving lights in the show's in-the-round staging. As he explains, "What Spotrack enabled us to do is be quite specific about the lighting despite the very fluid blocking of the show, in a way that we would just not have been able to do with a series of specials or really in any other way at all."
|