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Summit Goes GM in Salzburg
Summit Steel continues its reputation for realising very large scale events by rigging a major General Motors event for PCI Fitch in Salzburg, Austria, marking the launch of the new Corsa to GM’s European Dealers and Fleet Customers. Staged over four weeks, each presentation featured a two-day show cycle across a number of venues, and was preceded by a two week fit up.
The primary venue was Terminal 2 at Salzburg’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Airport, which was converted into a 250-seat auditorium and an exhibition area for the occasion – with both areas rigged by Summit flying over 800m of trussing on a total of 180 points. Summit’s project manager for the event Chris Walker says: “The main challenge with T2 was achieving positions and trim heights of points within the constraints of a roof space filled with lighting fixtures and AC ducts and which sloped steeply across the auditorium.”
In addition to this, Summit worked in two other venues – the Scalaria Hotel in picturesque lakeside village of St Wolfgang and Gusswerk, a former bell foundry now used for parties, receptions and presentations.
In Terminal 2 Summit installed a comprehensive trussing system – complete with a large number of spreader trusses to ensure that points and metalwork could hang in the correct places to service the requirements of production lighting, sound, AV and scenery, plus drapes. This was all completed ahead of schedule, despite Chris Walker and half of the Summit team being stranded at Heathrow Airport for 24 hours by the security alert on 10th August.
The impressive aspect of their work in this venue was the sheer scale of the space, the complexity of the task, and the efficiency and speed at which it all came together – which came from the thorough planning and preparation for which Summit is renowned.
At Gusswerk Summit installed a ground support structure for the Musion (3D holographic projection) screen, and also provided lighting positions throughout in the main theatre. The screen was tricky to rig. Made out of Musion Eyeliner foil (with a clingfilm-like consistency) it is stretched between two trusses at an angle of 45 degrees, so the top edge leans towards the audience. The Summit crew also mounted the projector in the roof of the building which beamed downwards at a very precise angle onto a painted Rosco surface on the floor, which bounced the image back up to the 45 degree screen, bringing the images alive to the delegates in a highly realistic manner.
As well as the screen, Summit’s ground support also provided trusses for lighting a stage area for the live presenter; auditorium lighting trusses were suspended from the venue’s wooden roof beams on eight Prostar motors.
In the exhibition area of Gusswerk, in keeping with the industrial history of the building, Summit constructed lighting rigging points entirely from scaffolding, clamping onto the venue’s existing I-beams, cranes and other assorted heavy engineering paraphernalia, leftover from its days as a bell foundry.
At the Scalaria Hotel rigging was required at this event hotel to hang some key scenic elements including 8ft diameter balls of wool and a pair of 35 ft knitting needles!
Chris Walker worked heading a crew of nine riggers for the T2 get in while Gusswerk was dealt with by a further three riggers one of whom then moved on to Scalaria, plus locals at all venues. The load out crew consisted of 14 Summit riggers on T2, working in split shifts of seven.
Chris Walker says: “I first got involved with planning this event eleven months before we went on site and during that time there have been a number of design incarnations, but the finished event looked great and the end client was delighted.”
Walker and his crew worked closely with PCI Fitch Lead technical manager Garry Wilson, project director Frank Kucharski, designer Martin Sutherland and production managers Kate Smith at T2 and Paul Fryer at Gusswerk as well as PCI Fitch GM Group account director Nigel Lloyd-Jones.
photos: PCI Fitch
9th November 2006
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