(SOFT PIANO MUSIC)
One of the ways in which we are getting the Angel to fly
in
where the actors on stage are in harnesses
and they are attached to semi-invisible lines which go up to pulleys in the grid.
Those lines are then attached to crew members
who are offstage that you can't see, who climb up and down ladders.
What you're looking at when you're looking at the flying
is a six- or seven-person mechanical duet.
The moment where the flying comes
happens at the end of a big fight sequence.
The speed and the rhythm of the fight,
we wanted to take that into the flying as well.
So whereas with automated flying you generally see a body being lifted
at a reasonably steady and sedate pace,
you don't get the dynamism you can get with a human on the other end of the line.
- To him... - Yeah.
The wings sort of give us the special effect
of the anatomy of flying.
They give us flapping, and they seem to lift her into the air
and to move her through the space.
And so the wings are this kind of emotional amplifier for her,
as well as giving us the sort of fantastic anatomy of flight.
They need to have a sense of life,
and so we use their sort of breath and we use their sense of intention
and their sense of muscularity to try and help bring those to life.
And so wherever we're working with people we haven't worked with before,
we'll introduce these underlying principles, these ideas
about how you bring something that's essentially inanimate to life.
OK, Phil.
We're 20 metres up in the air
and we are next to the
to perform a flying truss.
The wires come from the stage
up to the drop blocks.
They'll go underneath the truss
and over to the header blocks.
And from there, they'll go down 15 metres
to the top of the ladders.
Counterweighters attach themselves to the wires.
And when they climb the ladder, the performers come in.
When they climb down the ladder, the performers go out.
Let's go.
Part of my job is every day I go round and check all the harnesses
and do some visual inspections on the entire rig.
Once a week, we have the riggers come round and do a full inspection of the rig.
They're very thin 2.5mm lines.
We have about a 10-1 ratio for performance flying for safety.
They clip in the actors for us and then when we give them the go,
bang! Off we go. We jump off the ladders and up she goes.
The beauty with a counterweight system
is you get a very smooth, even transition between an up and down movement.
It makes you look like you're floating.
The counterweight flying is really interesting,
because we as technicians develop a different relationship
with the scene and with the performers.
When you're moving a piece of furniture,
you've got a cue and you're moving from this mark to that mark.
So that's very precise.
The counterweight flying is also precise.
However, because you are dealing with the performer,
it's a more subtle relationship that you develop with the scene.
And this is really interesting. It's different from what we normally do.
We need to rush down the ladder,
the three of us, at the same speed, at the same levels
to make sure that what you're seeing on stage
is only one figure.
I fly the Angel in the middle,
and I also have another person that is on the end of my line
and gives me sort of an extra assist.
It's all about the feel of the person.
It's about your relationship between yourself and the actor.
The Angel gets lifted,
and there's an added weight of one of the other actors
that gets pulled up by the Angel.
Therefore I have to feel that,
and for the stage and for the audience purposes,
I can't allow them to see the jolt of the added weight.
You sort of have to develop this symbiotic relationship
between yourself and the actor.
NEIL SHIMMEN: In the show, the Angel will fly for about a minute,
but we will have spent about four months
preparing and training the performers
to make that one minute perfect.
FINN CALDWELL: It's taken us an awfully long time
to build up those layers so that you've got one image,
and all of these people trying to achieve the same thing
and make it look like the physics is right -
the physics of the puppetry, the physics of the lifting up into the air,
the physics of someone being lifted.
And all of that working towards the same image.
GWEN HALES: One of the great things about my job
is that I get to come in right at the beginning of a process
and sit down with the director
and think about which scenes you can animate
by taking somebody into the air
and how that works alongside the story.
You rarely fill the air space that's right in the middle
in front of the audience, above the stage.