London welcomes 2022 with spectacular show
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The 13-minute show designed for home-viewing was broadcast live on BBC One and watched by a global viewing audience of millions.
Jack Morton’s creative show team worked in collaboration with On the Sly for the music production, Titanium Fireworks for the pyrotechnics design, and Skymagic for the swarm drone sequences.
Patrick O’Mahony, creative director of Skymagic, comments: “We were delighted to collaborate again with Jack Morton to design and deliver the drone light show for London New Year’s Eve for the second year running. Building on last year’s show, we have returned to the capital with a larger fleet and having developed our drone division both technologically and creatively. The 2022 show tells a celebratory story with an emphasis on three-dimensional formations, conceptual shapes and complex trajectories.”
Lighting for the event was designed by Durham Marenghi with Paul Cook as associate LD and programmer in Central London and Pedro Marcé Socias programming at The Old Royal Naval College (ORNC). All the lighting and lasers were pre-programmed and visualised on WYSIWYG and Depence2 to give the client and the BBC a clear indication of what they could expect to see on the night as there were to be no public rehearsals.
In Central London, 100 Claypaky Mythos 2 and 16 SGM P-10s were deployed to light St Pauls and a comprehensive rig at The Globe Theatre including the new IVL Photon from Minuit Une was supplied by Lights Control Rigging and managed by Rob Watson, the area was controlled by Chamsys MQ500 consoles which also ran the The Globe’s ETC network.
At the ORNC, 116 Cameo Zenit LED floods and 16 SGM P-10s were supplemented by the in house LED fixtures for the ORNC domes with beam effects provided by 60 Robe MegaPointes, control on a GrandMA2 console and supplied by SLX and managed by Ben Grashoff.
Durham called on the expertise of ER lasers at Millennium Bridge and the roof of St Paul’s cathedral, co-ordinated by Mark Payne, and the Woodroffe Bassett team at The Shard to integrate the city-wide effects into a memorable light show to herald what will hopefully be a far better New Year for all.
Project director was Jim Donald, creative director Kara Porter, executive producer Robert Alge and show producer Hayley Shingles.
Although the event was broadcast from several sites across London a complete light show programme was created at the ORNC as back up in case any of the other site broadcast feeds were lost or interrupted, fortunately this was not required on the night.
