Inside Paradise Under The Stars: Lighting Designer Peter Small on Crafting a 360° immersive world using zactrack
Paradise Under The Stars is an immersive nightclub experience inspired by the iconic Club Tropicana, brought to life through bold colour, atmosphere and movement. Lighting Designer Peter Small shares how he built the show’s vibrant world – from integrating multi-layered lighting throughout the space to using zactrack SMART to follow performers seamlessly in a constantly shifting, 360-degree environment.
This Q&A explores his creative approach, technical decisions, and the challenges of designing lighting for a large-scale immersive production.
The Project & Creative Vision
How did your involvement with Paradise Under The Stars come about?
I was asked if I’d like to do it, and I thought it was great. It was very different to the work I’d done previously. Paradise is based on Club Tropicana, which is a real place with a lot of history. So, there’s historical accuracy you need to honour – certain architectural elements and period details – but otherwise it’s much more about atmosphere, environment, feeling and immersion.
Can you talk about the integrated lighting and the overall look you were building?
The big thing on Paradise was the integrated lighting. All the seat backs had lighting in them – LED pixel tape. The foliage was lit, often double-sided. Every bit of detail had multiple light sources on it that could all change colour.
The whole thing was meant to be multi-spectral and multicoloured, so everything had to be lit with a minimum of two light sources. A huge amount of energy went into that level of work.
Bringing zactrack into the Production
This was your second time using zactrack for an immersive production, how was it used here?
On some productions, tracking functions almost like a traditional followspot replacement - focusing on a single performer at a time. Paradise is not that. It’s a fully immersive 360° world with many performers moving simultaneously. So, every part of the zactrack system was running at once: multiple lights tracking multiple people, live iris, live zoom, constant handovers, dark zones – all happening simultaneously.
It’s a completely different scale of tracking.
Did you know from the beginning that you were going to use zactrack?
Yes – it was the first thing in the budget. Because tracking was essential to achieving the flexibility and immersion they wanted, everything else was built around it.
Technical Approach & Implementation
How many trackers did you end up using, and what were the key fixture/budget decisions?
We used ten trackers – that’s the system limit. The whole thing was maxed out.
Follow distance was very different too: instead of flat, it’s a very steep angle. And people often assume they need a really high-end fixture with zactrack – something with shutters, gobos, all the bells and whistles – but you very rarely use those features in tracking.
It’s about using your budget smartly.
How did the zactrack set up go, and how did the process work in tech?
We always schedule a dedicated zactrack calibration day because we know how many targets we have and how complex it’s going to be. In that venue, the Christmas show is a nightmare: thousands of cues, moving lights constantly resetting, walking here, turning there – it all adds up.
With Paradise, we got to a point where we could put in one cue and anything could happen, and the system would just react. If they walk over there, one light fades out, another fades in. It just does it. That means the blocking can change constantly.
At one point someone came into the zactrack room and said, “What are you doing? You’ve had your time, you should be plotting. We need to know when you’ll be ready for tech.” But what we were doing – recalibrating and setting things up in a way that looked unfamiliar and counter-productive – was what was going to save us.
No one really got it until we ran the first cue. They said, “Do you need to step through this?” and we said, “No, we’re good to go.” All we needed to know was: who’s in this cue, who’s about to enter, and are the dancers coming on? Then: dancers on, general lights, off we go. You refine it later.
What sort of advanced zactrack features did you rely on?
In an immersive 360 show, people are coming out of doors and moving everywhere. Wherever they go, the lights bang in and pick them up. Then, as soon as they leave, dark zones and handovers take over so they’re not followed when they shouldn’t be.
Tom Davis was doing a lot with dark zones and attribute cues – constantly tweaking and refining. We were really operating at the system’s limits: using 2D and 3D, changing scenes, and using all the advanced features.
My favourite feature is Dance Zones – or dance zones plus attribute control, really. Instead of writing twenty cues and keeping them up to date, you write one cue and say, “This light follows this dancer in this section.” It sounds like “that’s just what zactrack does”, but in reality you rarely get to use it that elegantly. Here we really did, and it takes your workload down massively.
The funny thing is most people don’t even understand what’s happening technically. They just think, “They’re lit.” They don’t notice that a moving light is acting like a followspot without a followspot operator. That’s good – it means the tech disappears into the immersion: hard-edged spotlight on a singer in a yellow dress in a Cuban club, and the audience just believes it.
On this production, where were the tags mostly placed?
Mostly wigs and a lot of shoulders. It was less complicated than some shows in one sense, but there were a lot of costume changes.
You get classic problems: a guy’s wearing a suit, you hide the tag under his jacket and think it’s great… then he takes the jacket off and you realise you’ve lost it. Or in one number the tags are in a different position, and Tom has to adjust.
Because it’s a Tropicana nightclub with lots of costume changes, we had to work very closely with wardrobe. In rehearsal, you discover the issues: someone does a quick change, comes back on, and isn’t lit. Where’s the tag? On the dressing room floor with the rest of the costume they just took off.
That’s tech. That’s why I always say: you are going to lose time to this. But what you gain is worth it, and the director and creative team understood that because I’d conditioned them to expect it. If it came as a surprise in tech, they’d kick off, but we’d been reminding them from early on.
Lessons Learned & Advice
What tips or tricks have you learnt about managing tech time and calibration with zactrack?
You have to give it proper time. We always book a zactrack calibration day. People say, “Can’t you do it in four hours?” and I say, “What if I want to move all the anchors around?”
It means talking to the set and rigging teams – “We’ll run this cable here, but can we have some spare points dotted around for alternative anchor positions?” We do things like speckling anchors on magic arms now – little lessons from the first time when someone came in and said, “Oh, you’ve put them all flat against the wall,” and we realised that was bad for minimum distance and coverage.
Everyone needs each other: there’s always someone who’s the “data person” or the “zactrack person,” and they need protecting in tech. You have to be the one saying, “No, we can’t move on yet – they need this time, at that height, in that position, right now.” You need four hours to recalibrate? Then you need four hours.
Any zactrack advice or tips you would share with other lighting designers?
Go on the training. I know that’s not what people want to hear – lots of people would rather do almost anything else than sit through highly technical training – but it was really helpful.
On the course, the trainer went through every box, every bit of hardware, very thoroughly. Because he was such a font of knowledge, we could ask very specific questions. He even pulled up ground plans and said, “Let’s design with a zactrack system for this – what would you do?” Then he’d spring little trap questions: “You’d put anchors here, right?” and explain why that wouldn’t work due to ceiling height or obstructions.
I took notes, shoved them in a cupboard for about five years, and when I later decided I wanted tracking, I dug them back out. That gave me a head start on the rules.
I keep saying: the lighting designer is in the conversation well before production, programmers, zactrack people, or hire companies – sometimes years before. You’re the one in the meeting going, “How are we going to light this model flying up and down?” and asking, “Is there budget for followspots?” If the answer is no, you’re the one who has to say, “Okay, then we need tracking, and that means X, Y, Z.”
So, my advice: there are some rules. You need to go and find out what they are and make sure your production can follow them. You can’t just slap zactrack on a job and expect it to work. It has to be set up, calibrated and used in a very particular way. If you follow the rules, it works great. I’ve never had a disaster with it – I’ve always been really pleased and amazed watching it work.
Project Credits
Who were the lighting suppliers on this project?
White Light supplied the system. They’ve expanded their zactrack stock a lot, I can’t say I’ve got half their systems anymore! I remember Dom calling me about a project (Paradise or another one) and saying, “If this really goes ahead, we’ll buy another system.” And they did. So, thank you to them.
WL’s Head of Lighting, Dom Yates comments: “We’ve been extremely impressed by the way zactrack has evolved and continues to grow in popularity among our customers. In what is a highly competitive remote followspot market, it has successfully established itself as a go-to solution for many productions.”
About Lost Estate
The Lost Estate has been crafting unforgettable, unique experiences since 2017, telling greatest stories ever told through live music, breathtaking theatre & immersive hospitality.
Credits
Photos – M Wildsmith, The Lost Estate
Produced By The Lost Estate
Lighting Designer – Peter Small
Lighting Programmer – Tom Davis
Lead Production Electrician – James Smellie
LX1 – Benjamin Vetluzhskikh
Production Electricians – Bradley Halliwell, Alex Walton, Sophie Telfer, Jacob Gowler, Jack Hathaway, Jen Garland, Em Crochetiere
Lighting supplier – White Light
Costumes – Susan Kulkarni
Scenery – Darling & Edge
All photos © M Wildsmith, The Lost Estate
