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L’Orchestre de Jeux Vidéo’s “Final Fantasy” concert lit with Chauvet

Hironobu Sakaguchi’s “Final Fantasy” series has been hailed as “the gateway to the enchanting world of role playing games”. Today, fifteen years after the first installment in this internationally acclaimed video game series, “Final Fantasy” continues to inspire. On November 12, 2022, L’Orchestre de Jeux Vidéo performed “Materia Symphony - Final Fantasy VII” at Saint-Jean Baptiste church in Montreal.

This 55-minute concert featured music from various soundtracks in the series and was accompanied by an Érik Nowosielski-Lamoureux lighting design. “To prepare myself for this show, I sat down with the conductor of the orchestra, Jonathan Dagenais, and went through the whole symphony with him, discussing what each theme represented in the video game”, says Nowosielski-Lamoureux. “He is a big fan of this game, so it was easy for him to describe what every part of the symphony represented.”

Taking this information, the LD proceed to tell the story in color with help from Chauvet Professional R2X Wash and Colorado 1-Tri Tour fixtures supplied by Ambiofonik of Laval, Quebec. “The most important part of this design was the color palette”, he explains. “Each color represented a character in the game, or a key moment. For example, when each character’s theme would come, I would use colors of their clothing or accessories to represent their arrivals. In other cases, I relied on colors to represent some physical location. The game mostly happens in a city that is grey and green. At one point, the main character goes outside into the real world and we can see a blue sky. I lit up the top of the church in blue to represent that moment.”

During the critical scene at the Mako reactor, green lighting was used to represent the magical liquid form of the planet’s life source. To create an apocalyptic industrial feeling, Nowosielski-Lamoureux accented this green hue with cold white light.

Key to helping the Québécois lighting designer create his color narrative were his rig’s twelve Rogue R2X Wash fixtures. He positioned three of these RGBW units on 4’6’’ high pipes on each side of the stage, using them to light the orchestra and for aerial effects. The remaining six washes were positioned on the deck in front of the choir and called on to back light the orchestra creating crossing aerial patterns.

Also adding to the colorized storytelling were the rig’s twelve Colorado 1-Tri Tour fixtures, which were arranged in front of the stage. From this position, the RGB washes created big punchy looks, accenting key moments in the performance. As for the programming, Nowosielski-Lamoureux says he had more than 400 cues, all timed in the musical score. “I would follow the score and count the music to enter each cue at the right time”, he says.

(Photos: Vincent Mesure Photographe)

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