Dunn and Turner collaborated closely on the design and specification of the equipment, all of which was provided by Gearhouse South Africa, the main technical suppliers for the Closing Ceremony event produced by The VWV Group.
The lighting had to be big, bold and memorable to fill the stadium with awesome effects and WOW factors for the 30 action-packed minute show, which has been acclaimed as among the best and most visual World Cup ceremonies to date, a challenge to which Dunn and Turner rose with characteristic zeal!
They needed the most powerful lightsources available to make maximum impact in the space, and that's why a large number of Robes were selected. With a relatively expedient rig in terms of fixture numbers, each one needed to be as flexible and multi-functional as possible.
The 44 REDWash 3-192s were positioned around the perimeter of the field of play. They were used for throwing colour washes across the pitch cloth for the big dance numbers, and looked very cool with their big blocks of light, specially on the aerial camera shots. The colour mixing produces a fabulously rich and very bright quality of light which, being LED, is completely different, and this worked perfectly for diffusing the edge of the pitch cloth (a light coloured cover was down for the show and removed for the game), the centre of which had to be left clear for fabulous large format video projections.
The ColorSpot 2500E ATs played a vital role in lighting the edges of the projection area. They were fitted with four different custom gobos, including a rectangular 'framing gobo' that was designed to produce the exact mask required to apply light precisely to the projection border area.
The Closing Ceremony show was programmed and run by Tim Dunn on a grandMA full size console. Hugh Turner called the eight follow spots, and the fibre data network used for distributing lighting control was designed by Chris Grandin from Gearhouse Media.
* The Closing Ceremony featured the first ever large scale video projections to be integrated into a live show in South Africa.
UK-based The Projection Studio's Ross Ashton was appointed as projection consultant for this aspect of the show by Mik Auckland, part of a specialist team from Jack Morton Worldwide, who brought their experience of producing large, high profile events to the equation.
All the projection hardware and software solutions were supplied by E/T/C Paris working for Gearhouse South Africa.
Ashton's role included overseeing the entire projection process, from selecting the equipment supplier to assisting Johannesburg based content providers, Ministry of Illusion (MOI), optimise the imagery to work on a monumental scale.
On site, he worked closely with the E/T/C Paris team led by Partrice Bouqueniaux, with whom he has a long history of collaborating on innovative and spectacular projects. He also co-ordinated between the show caller and the host broadcasting service (HBS) with information about which video clips were coming up next.
Ashton comments, "It was a huge privilege to be asked to work on this, and all the visual departments including lighting really pulled out the stops to ensure it was a memorable show fitting the occasion. E/T/C Paris are the best known experts in this field and it was great to be working with them again, and also with MOI, who produced an impressive array of images."
The dramatic 55m square projections in the middle of the field-of-play - onto a cloth covering the pitch - were delivered by 18 Christie 18K Roadster projectors, mounted on two platforms flown in the roof of
