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Fairytale Weekend for Summit
Summit Steel were production riggers for the amazing opening ceremony event that launched HCA2005 – the ongoing bicentennial celebration of the birth of legendary Danish storyteller and poet, Hans Christian Andersen.
The two hour ‘Once Upon A Time’ event was staged in in front of a live audience of 35,000 at Copenhagen’s massive Parken Stadium, and starred a glittering cast of over 300 international artists and celebrities including Jean Michele Jarre, who staged a special live performance interpretation of the fairytale ‘The Shadow’.
The show was commissioned by the Danish Broadcasting Company (DR) in conjunction with British production company Initial, and was broadcast live on DR1 and to the rest of Europe via the European Broadcasting Union. Guests included the Danish Royal Family, government representatives and a host of VIPs.
The production brief was to transform the stadium into an enchanting fairytale universe for the occasion, offering a festive backdrop for the event. Equipment was supplied by several leading UK companies including Summit Steel, Britannia Row (sound), PRG (lighting) and Creative Technology (screen). The set was designed by Bill Laslett, Al Gurdon was brought onboard as lighting director, Derrick Zieba as sound designer, with Tanya Williams as Initial’s production manager and Nick Levitt as event production manager in a true A-Team collaboration.
The Summit team, led by Jon Bray, co-ordinated all the different departmental rigging details needed for lighting, sound and special effects, liaising closely with the local riggers led by Mikkel Brogaard from European Staging. Summit also supplied all the main production rigging services and solutions, and a lot of the equipment to achieve this feat.
Jon Bray said: “The key to success on projects like this is to get the planning right, to anticipate problems and solve them before you get on site. The communication between service companies was great and the planning paid off with everyone managing to keep to the tight load-in schedule.”
Their biggest technical challenge was rigging one of the largest show video screens ever – measuring a mighty 23.3 metres wide by 13.4 high, and weighing approximately 45 tonnes. “It was a real monster – metaphorically speaking of course!” declared Bray. The screen was the major visual element of the stage and therefore vital to creating and relaying the magic of the show.
The screen was so enormous it was half ground-stacked and half hung to avoid over-straining the module clips on the LED panels. The top half was built first and then suspended on 13 x 2-tonne motors. The bottom half was then stacked on the ground, one column at a time, and moved in using a Summit tracking system. When the bottom was complete and in place, the top was then lowered in and the two halves mated. The bottom remained ground supported on a special scaffolding deck.
For maximum safety, the top half motors were linked to load-cell monitors to ensure that no excessive weight shifted onto the bottom at any time.
Summit supplied a total of 100 motors for video, sound, set and drapes including some variable speed Kinesys controlled hoists for moving set pieces.
The Parken Stadium’s roof can open, and when in this mode, it’s stored at one end in a concertina-like arrangement. With a football fixture in the venue just a week before ‘Once Upon A Time’, the roof was closed leaving no access to the roof beams immediately prior to the show. All the front-of-house rigging was consequently pre-rigged before the football. Forty motors were rigged and run out of view and their cables pulled up, and then run down again once the roof was closed for the show, utilised for over-audience lighting points and PA delays.
Once onsite, Summit’s crew of six supervised and worked with the local riggers on the full event, dealt with the screen, and also supplied and operated five Performer flying winches for the over-stage acrobats.
11th April 2005
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