Working with show technical director Adam Wildi, creative director Simon Garrett, and executive producer Moira Hunter-Ross, the Summit team of 12 riggers was led by Jon Bray and Chris Walker.
They arrived on site three weeks before the event, and began creating a rigging infrastructure in the enormous 290,000sq.m Aspire Dome. This houses a wide range of sports facilities including a 200m running track where the opening ceremony was staged.
The Aspire Dome was completely bare in terms of rigging facilities, apart from the structural roof trusses, which Summit took as their starting point. Over 1100m of trussing and 130 Lodestar hoists later, they had a flexible grid system to enable lighting, sound, scenic tracking and performer flying to be hung exactly where it was needed, to work with show designer Paul Bonamini's stage set.
"Advanced planning was key on this project," says Jon Bray. Summit worked closely with lighting designer Durham Marenghi, sound designer Paul Keating (Delta Sound), and Stage One's Q-Motion team (scenic tracking & performer flying) to ensure all went smoothly during the fit up.
Rigging was tricky from many angles, one being that the beams were extremely high and raked with the roof - from about 35m to 20m. Summit's extensive stock of long chained Lodestar motors came in extremely useful here. The first task Summit undertook was to install a safety line system throughout the roof that ensured safe access along all the beams.
Where possible, they tried to rig the required production trusses directly off the existing roof trusses, rather than bridling, which would have taken much longer and reduced the available trim height, with many points needing hook heights of over 25m. "We basically tried to make it as easy to implement the rigging as possible while at the same time meeting the needs of all departments," explains Bray.
Summit hung the large VDOSC sound system in eight main arrays and installed 10 lighting trusses, some exceeding 50m in length, and trimmed at up to 25m. They also rigged four 50m trusses for performer flying and an 80m long screen tracking truss as well as other scenic pieces and drapes.
In addition to the main arena, Summit rigged in two other areas within the Aspire Dome - a VIP gala dinner featuring the Shaolin Monks, and a conference room that hosted a three-day International sports science conference to coincide with the venue launch.
(Chris Henry)
