Lighting designer Al Gurdon carefully selected all of the lighting equipment to meet the challenges of the production and the long wish list of the Russian organising committee. This translated to over 750 moving lights, 250 LED lights and 100 conventionals, extending to every corner of the arena, including the rig, balconies, floor and scaffold.
The roof load was a massive 140 tons, which was over the load capacity for the venue. The solution was to allocate 40 tons to a supporting scaffold approximately 100m wide by 22mhigh, and providing additional functions beyond just support.
135 Alpha Spot HPE 1200 fixtures were placed inside the colossal grid, arranged in vertical columns of five fixtures from top to bottom, extending 27 columns left to right, enveloping the entire stage out to the ends of the scaffold. The front of the scaffold held a 1120m Martin LC screen, which has a semi-transparent design, allowing fixtures from behind to shine through.
"We've used this type of LED screen before, with fixtures placed behind it," explained Eurovision production manager Ola Melzig. "It gives you options for so many more looks. But you can't just stick any fixture back there. They have to be ultra bright and ultra sharp to be effective. The Alpha Spot HPE 1200 fits the bill, with the added benefit of fast movement. Also extremely important was a lightweight fixture, since we were putting so much weight on the scaffold to begin with."
The Alpha Spots were controlled by Andrew Voller on a Virtuoso console. Voller explained: "The Alpha Spot HPE 1200s were brilliant. The Alpha Spots were positioned behind the rear curved semi-transparent video wall and were surprisingly bright, cutting though the video wall when needed. It gave Al Gurdon, the lighting designer, the ability to lose the video wall and create a wall of light. The gobo animation ability of the fixture is great, using combinations of the animation wheel and gobos to creating amazing textured air looks."
Alberico D'Amato, Clay Paky sales manager said: "We are very proud of the work that the Eurovision lighting team did. It is prestigious show that provides a lot of visibility and we are glad that Procon wanted to use Clay Paky fixtures. We are enjoying a very successful partnership with them and look forward to more great things together."
There will be an indepth feature on the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in the July issue of Lighting&Sound magazine.
(Jim Evans)
