The two hour highly visual show, produced by global brand experience agency Jack Morton Worldwide (JMW) and directed by David Zolkwer featured a cast of 2,000 plus special guests including Rod Stewart and Susan Boyle, offering a snapshot of the history, character, culture, industry, quirkiness and innate humour of Scotland. It presented the 4500 athletes from 71 participating nations to a live audience of over 40,000 plus around two billion TV viewers.
Among the Robe fixtures were 64 of the amazing new big lights - shortly to be launched worldwide - and 28 of Robe's new LEDBeam 1000s.
These were joined by 183 x Pointes, 100 x LEDBeam 100s, 98 x LEDWash 600s and 60 x CycFX 8s - all from Robe's Robin series - which were combined with other lighting fixtures to help Routledge create one of the most spectacular Commonwealth Games OCs ever.
When Routledge - lead lighting programmer for the London Olympics Ceremonies, LD for Gary Barlow, Katherine Jenkins and other high profile artists as well as a prolific TV lighting director and LD - won the pitch from JMW to design the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the Games, to make maximum impact he actively sought to work with a quality lighting partner who could provide specific elements of the equipment package.
"Robe were extremely enthusiastic and also offered some fantastic opportunities to work with new and innovative technologies - it's very exciting to be the first to use new products," he commented.
The challenges of staging the Opening Ceremony included working in Celtic Park, an iconic football venue, but one not normally utilised as a theatrical live event space, especially not of this size, so all departments had to think laterally to deal with weight loading and other physical restrictions ... to install their equipment in the right places.
Routledge worked with a control team of three - lead programmer Jonathan Rouse and programmer Tom Young - both using grandMA2 full size consoles, and fully redundant backup systems provided by lighting contractor PRG.
Chris Henry was the design associate for the project. She also trained 18 volunteer operators to use the follow spots ... and called them during the show.
PRG's very efficient crew of seven led by Rich Gorrod looked after all the lighting equipment, and Robe's own Steve Eastham was also onsite to assist with tech'ing all the Robe kit.
They all worked closely with Andy Loveday, JMW's technical manager (systems) for ceremonies and Ben Holdsworth, JMW's production manager for lighting & rigging.
"A huge amount of collaboration made this all happen," says Routledge in conclusion, following the successful delivery of a dynamic and much acclaimed OC.
"We really had to 'box clever' with this project and maximise the 'bang-for-buck' on each and every cue - from using hundreds of generic fixtures to cross-light the field of play to using the latest in Robe technology - every light was considered and placed accordingly so it could offer maximum benefit to the show.
"Robe products have been increasingly prevalent in my designs over the last two years and with Robe's enthusiasm and service on this project alone, I feel that their fixtures will be at the centre of my design processes for some time."
After the OC, all the production was stripped out of Celtic Park and re-rigged by the team in Hampden Park stadium in the south of the city for the Closing Ceremony, starring Kylie Minogue.
The time pressure was intense with one day for the get-in and straight into the show - in true rock 'n' roll style - to celebrated the ending of Scotland' largest ever cultural and sporting event.
(Jim Evans)
