TAIT Delivers Moving Projection Ceiling to Eros Ramazotti's 2013 European Tour

	Eros Ramazotti's 2013 European tour with set design by Tait. Photo: Talula Shepperd

Italian singer-songwriter Eros Ramazotti opened his 2013 European tour in Italy last month, with TAIT helping to bring his spectacular set design to life. Set and lighting designer Jvan Morandi worked with Ramazotti on the NOI World Tour, which will travel throughout Europe over the coming months. The design concept was made of three separate influences which are woven together during the show.

Morandi explains, "We were influenced by 1960/70s psychedelica and the surreal staging of Joseph Svoboda at the Prague National Theatre. We also worked with the style of Japanese origami and paper manipulation as well as the iconic 'brutalist' concrete architecture which was prolific in some of the Roman housing estates where Eros grew up. My main aim was to create a very fluid changing kinetic sculpture, that would move around Eros and the band, creating morphing spaces while they performed."

Tait provided a rolling main stage including the band riser package, trapdoors, and a set of magic stairs for performer and technician access. The show opens with the main stage closed down and covered by the projection ceiling, a custom scenic element that consists of six geometric pieces. Each piece then flies away to reveal Ramazotti and his band. These elements created a 3D projection ceiling giving Morandi the versatility to form striking shapes and aerial effects during the show.

With projectors positioned at front of house, stage left and stage right, all surfaces of the projection ceiling were utilized to create multiple looks from every seat in the arena. The downstage face of the two upstage triangles also had a 12mm LED screen that was two meters tall and six meters wide. These screens were accompanied by two 12mm video screens that hung just upstage of the projection ceiling. This created a multitude of layers to the video content and extensive depth in the field of view. All six of the projection ceiling pieces are hung from 500kg variable speed chain motors.

Morandi continues, "The projection was very complicated. Being able to track three dimensional movement of the set pieces with the projectors has required months of work both from Tait/FTSI, and Coolux/Event Management. The integration works well; it's an ambitious task due to the amount of unknown parameters on various moving objects but we achieved most of what we set out to do. Initially, people were baffled by the design and its size, but we've had extremely positive feedback about the show and I think it's been a great success."

Controlled by Tait/FTSI's Navigator automation software, each piece of the projection ceiling gave location feedback to the show's media server, in order that content was perfectly mapped to the automated set pieces. The pieces were moved into a number of shapes throughout the show and used to block off parts of the main stage, providing more intimate performance areas.

The show is an example of Tait's ability to use a hybrid of standard rental components combined with custom pieces to provide a totally unique design concept, the company says.