Dragon Slayer At Warwick Castle

Jan ’23 Update – Click HERE to see some fabulous drone footage of the show finale!

Warwick Castle’s 2022 production of 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.

The tale was powerfully told by a first half of live action with actors and the horses of The Knights Of Middle England, followed by a dazzling projection-mapped Act II, in which Pixel Artworks’ visuals brought the story and its fantastic beasts to life as they were projected directly onto the ancient castle walls, while dragon fire and fireworks lit the night.

We were 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.

Adam adds: “The audio content for Act II was supplied to us by Clearcut Sound for Pixel Artworks. Clearcut supplied the stems that we mixed in spatial for the second act of Dragon Slayer and included all the special effects, created for them in a studio, from which I designed the show files. 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 timecode which went out to lights, projection, pyro and fireworks.”

Liam Bartlett, Senior Operations Director at Warwick Castle said “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 in 2022”.

Read the full version of this story HERE on Fast&Wide.com 

Photo credits: Jack Silkstone / Adams Productions