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After 23 years of touring, Paramount's LaserSpectacular has become a cult classic, presenting the music of Pink Floyd like you’ve never seen it before. Surrounded by 10,000 watts of concert quality sound, Pink Floyd’s musical legacy continues as the bands concept music captures the imagination and carries listeners away on a mind-expanding journey driven by cutting edge effects. Colorful lasers and lighting effects parallel the sonic journey as the senses are confronted with an array of glowing visual displays choreographed to the soundtrack during the 2 hour and 20 minute show.
“Pink Floyd’s music is very dramatic and visual,” says Paramount’s LaserSpectacular Producer Steve Monistere. “You can see or imagine images when you listen to their music. Without any lighting effects at all, there is still a show in your mind. Now imagine using lasers, lighting, video and other special visual effects to interpret what your mind is ‘seeing’ and that is why people love this show so much”.
Using jaw-dropping new technologies a visual evolution unfolds as solid lines of light wash the room with color, animated neon figures are set in motion, a giant inflatable come to life and laser beams bounce and glide through the open air, crafting imagery, such as a soaring eagle that flies over the crowd. During the song “Learning To Fly,” you’ll see a psychedelic, rotating lighting gobo with images of the history of flight, from the Wright Brothers all the way to the Space Shuttle. During “Comfortably Numb” 3-D animation reveal the song’s storyline of a Rock Star struggling to “make it to the show”. The brand new 3-D images actually have dimension and can be see from all sides! Finally, Paramount’s best laserists pull out all the stops and bombard you will EVERYTHING in their bag of visual tricks for the shows finally, “Run Like Hell.” Special prism glasses multiply the fun, making 1 image become six. Three 30-foot screens wall the experience.
While Lasers are beautiful they behold an awesome amount of power, which means a qualified laserist is needed to harness the technology whether for military deployment entertainment, or other purposes.
“Lasers are like no other light source,” says Paramount LaserSpectacular Producer, Steve Monistere. “A laser emits a coherent form of radiation. This means that all of the waves (light) are in sync with each other.”
For instance, a large public pool with many people in it would have waves traveling every which way splashing about. However, if all of the waves in the same pool were added together to make one continuous wave, it would be strong enough to crush most of the people in the pool.
The same holds true with light. A 60W light bulb in your house emits 60W of incoherent light, of which you could look at and feel just fine. A 60W laser emits the same 60W of light in coherent form. Looking in to a 60W laser beam would instantaneously super heat the fluid in your eye and cause your eyeball to pop like a water balloon. And yet this 60W laser beam can create magnificent spectacles for entertainment.
“Another wonderful trait of the laser beam is its ability to stay in a beam,” says Monistere. “It is highly directional. This gives the ability to bounce the beam all over the place and retain it small size and high intensity. All this wonderful light is sent in to a projection system that redirects the light to be target at high speed. This can create anything from beams to wonderful graphics.”
It takes 19.4 Terabits of digital data to perform The LaserSpectacular. A Tera stands for 1x10 to 9th power, which is a lot of zeroes. Roughly 19.4 Terabit of information is passed through several different channels all ending up on the stage in one form or another, from the digital sound and lighting data, to laser and video data. The point is, it takes roughly 19,400,000,000 ones and zeroes to make this show possible.
Every year Paramount incorporates new elements into the show, so expect new features each time you see the show!
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