Alcorn McBride at Dolfinarium, The Netherlands

Alcorn McBride products are playing a central role in a new black-light show at the Dolfinarium in Harderwijk, The Netherlands; among them, a V4 Pro, Video Binloop and LightCue system are used for show control and AV sourcing. The theme park, which features an impressive collection of marine mammals, introduced Spetter en het magische avontuur last summer showcasing the magical adventures of Spetter, the dolphin, and his friends.

The show is staged in a 500-seat former 4D theatre, so seat movements and air effects are integrated into the presentation. Although no human characters appear in the tale of the dolphin and his marine buddies, the show is controlled by actors who trigger the start, pause, and lighting controls from an OCC panel on the stage. "The V4 Pro is the perfect controller in the hands of actors and operators," says Frank Ruisch, of AV-Sync who was the show's sound designer and show control programmer, the latter in collaboration with Boaz Borggreve, of Nightlife Productions.

Alcorn McBride's Video Binloop professional audio and video reproducer (with three reproducers for this application) handles inputs from eight JBL VRX 928 speakers, a pair of JBL 3635 Cinema subs, and three Crown XTI 4000 amps. Ruisch was charged with making sure all the show's music and sound effects were in place and mixed to surround sound. He also did the voiceover recording for the characters and the soundtrack's final mix downs.

Alcorn McBride's LightCue primarily functions as a lighting board replacement in automated applications. For the Dolfinarium's show, it controls an array of ten black light cannons on stage in combination with 50 black fluorescents in the theater; the fluorescents are directly connected to an output of the V4 Pro show controller.

Ruisch is pleased with the ease of use and reliability of the Alcorn McBride products, which have to be robust to fill the needs of the Dolfinarium's demanding schedule for Spetter en het magische avontuur. "The show is running perfectly two to five times a day; we haven't had any downtime," he reports.