Autograph’s Special Events team recently provided the sound design and audio infrastructure for another Pixel Artworks production at one of England’s greatest castles.

A series of summer evening shows debuted a completely new format, turning Warwick Castle courtyard into a 360° immersive theatre seating audiences upwards of 2,000 each night. The Dragon Slayer tale was told by a first half of live action with actors and the horses of The Knights of Middle England, followed by a projection-mapped Act II, when Pixel Artworks’ brought the story and its fantastic beasts to life, projected onto the ancient castle walls while dragon fire and fireworks lit the night.

Dragon Slayer recounts the tenth-century legend of Guy of Warwick, in which the low-born hero falls in love with the daughter of the Earl. In order to win her hand he must prove himself through acts of valour, chivalric adventures and by becoming a knight – in the process he battles dragons, giants, trolls and other terrifying adversaries.

Autograph was engaged by Pixel Artworks to design, install and operate a large 5.1 surround sound system capable of delivering the shows’ combination of live performance and pre-recorded material. Head of Special Events, Andrew Hedges handled the sound design and led the team who installed and operated the system throughout the shows, while Adam Taylor was responsible for compiling the pre-recorded content then creating the correct spatial imaging and object placement to match the visuals.

‘Our job was to supply a sound system that was reasonably unobtrusive but powerful enough to have the sonic impact to match the imagery and live action,’ Hedges says. ‘It had to respect off-site noise limits while keeping that punch, so the choice of equipment and its subsequent locations was critical. We also had to make sure that none of the six loudspeaker locations impeded sightlines, which in a 360° immersive environment of that size takes some working out.

‘A three-day build was followed by two days of rehearsals, during which we had to fit in with the castle’s opening hours as it is a busy attraction. The system was principally five hangs of d&b audiotechnik Y-Series – our go-to loudspeaker for this kind of event – with a single stack of B22 subwoofers in a cardioid configuration. The rear rejection offered by this design really helps control off-site levels of low frequencies. We used d&b’s ArrayCalc for the design phase then their R1 remote control software to tune the system once in place.’

The players in Act I were equipped with wireless microphones (DPA capsules with Shure Axient Digital transmitters and receivers) and that part ‘was mixed much like a theatre show in real time, so it had a very live feel which matched the action perfectly.’ Act II was, by contrast, entirely 5.1 audio playback synchronised with the projection-mapped visuals.

‘The audio content was supplied to us by Pixel Artworks and included all the special effects, created for them in a studio, from which I designed the show files, Taylor continues. ‘That entailed creating a 5.1 mix with appropriate object placements to coincide with the projection, various pyros and special effects around the courtyard. Once I had everything programmed the show was run from QLab (and panLab running within it to move the dragon around), including the time code that went out to lights, projection, pyro and fireworks.’

Lighting for the shows was provided by Full Production. Director of Live Events & Touring, Marc Thornton, comments: ‘Essentially the challenge for us was to light a large 360° space, including a 27m wide stage plus all the performers and animals, without getting in the way of the projection-mapped content. At the same time we needed to colour-match the lighting as closely as possible to the video so that there was no visible transition between the two.

‘We worked closely with Joe Kelly [Pixel Artworks’ Production Manager] to make sure everything could be seen while staying within budget. We dealt with some of the same challenges as the Autograph team in that the location made it impossible to fly trusses wherever we needed them, so positioning was largely dictated by having to locate fixtures on existing walls and the roof. Fortunately Pixel Artworks brought in a cherry picker and a crane to help locate their projectors which, happily, we were able to use too.

‘Warwick Castle didn’t want any large structures in the area so we used compact lights throughout, a total of 32 moving heads plus 25 LED washes for the castle walls. We also used 16 footlights along the front of the stage, battery-operated and controlled wirelessly so there were no cable runs to that area at all. Overall a challenging but very interesting and fun project for us.’

‘Dragon Slayer is an incredibly complex production and we were delighted to work with Pixel Artworks and Autograph to deliver a successful run of shows,’ adds Liam Bartlett, Senior Operations Director at Warwick Castle.

After Dragon Slayer’s run of shows, the Autograph team completely reconfigured the audio system for the Sundown Spectacular Festival, celebrating the end of summer with live bands, DJs, street food and a fireworks finale.