Cirque du Soleil Story told Several Ways
- brucewiebusch
- Jun 29, 2015
- 2 min read
Part of being an effective Editor is looking beyond the initial story and thinking about the other ways the initial story can be told, split apart, and re-purposed after the original story breaks.
For an initial story on motion-control applications at Cirque du Soleil, Entertainment Engineering editors flew to Las Vegas in 2008 and met with Keith Wright and Erik Walsted, both technical managers at the time for the Cirque production of “KA.” That story was published in the magazine shortly there-after, but the editors would go on to write a script and produce this video episode of Entertainment Engineering Television (EETV) featuring Cirque du Soleil and it’s use of hydraulics, a part of the motion -control system used on the KA stage.
Getting a private, behind-the-scenes tour and interviews was extremely important part of the process for writing a broader, general story. Zeroing in later on the hydraulic components used in the KA stage led to a second way to tell the story. The same editor who wrote the initial story helped write the video script. He was able to go back to his contacts and get details that were not included in the first story.
With the consent of Cirque du Soleil, we were able to mention the Parker Hannifin and the “role” their hydraulic products played in controlling the massive stage featured in our story. Parker ended up sponsoring the video, and supporting it’s distribution through their own internal distribution channels.
This episode of EETV was included in Parker’s OnTV, a video newsletter the company produced and distributed at the time via CD. They also published a printed newsletter, which mentioned the episode of EETV to Parker’s worldwide network.
After the video and the initial story, there was also a follow-up story that appeared in a subsequent issue of the magazine that focused on ongoing maintenance and upgrades to the stage several years later. That story was mentioned Siemens, who eventually paid Entertainment Engineering for the rights to post our copyrighted material to their site via a licensing fee.
Part of being an effective Technical Content Editor is looking beyond the initial story and thinking about the many ways the initial story can be re-purposed and recycled for many years after the original story breaks. See the EETV video here:
