“El Sueño de Toledo” takes spectators on a hi-octane condensed one-hour journey through history – from the Reign of Ricaredo in the 6th century to the arrival of the railways – touching on the battle of Navas de Tolosa and the discovery of America along the way! The 1500 years of history is represented by 185 actors and a plethora of special effects.
At the heart of Koert’s lighting spec were 74 x Robe BMFL WashBeam and 20 x MegaPointe moving lights.
“The show’s essence was similar to some of those we have created in the French park, so some of the base principles and style needed to reflect a continuity, but it’s a fresh, new and completely unique dramatic tour de force which needed a lot of attention to detail,” explained Koert.
One of the key Puy du Fou requirements was that the show was elegant and refined as well as providing lots of excitement. All of this had to be delivered in a classy collage of lighting, projection-mapped scenery and SFX.
The 75 x BMFL WashBeams are undoubtedly the workhorses in the design, together with some LED wash lights. Taking on this role, they needed to stand out from all the action and be a truly multi-functional tool.
The big challenge on this project was the time.
Koert and his own programming team of Christopher Bolton and Luc de Climmer had three weeks on site overall to get everything into the grandMA3 console, but out of that there was only one complete week of lighting programming.
This project should win because the Robe fixtures proved to be perfect workhorses within a lighting spec containing hundreds of other lights.
Koert auditioned several products in a shootout for the job – initially in 2016 when the project was first confirmed and budgeted – and from this extensive trial, the BMFL WashBeam emerged as “easily the best choice”, especially for the 40 – 100 metre throw distances for which they needed something with serious power!
Koert made a point of mentioning that “[The MegaPointe] is the nicest beam [he’d] have seen for a long time,” further cementing these fixtures as essential to the magnificence and grand nature of this epic show!
Construction was ongoing for the whole period, adding extra pressure on all technical departments.
While the basic building blocks can be visualized to some extent, real time in situ is vital to focus on more complicated cues like the proper illumination of Olivier Beriot’s impressive costumes … all resulting in a truly breath-taking show for the public who are flocking to see it.
