Activating A City Of Lights

Text:/ Derek Powell

IN THE WAKE OF A DUMP & BURN

The Light Scope ran day and night, attracting a constant stream of visitors, while Santos City of Lights pulled in tens of thousands to its nightly South Bank shows. Santos City of Lights is a sky show, but its technology is more than a thousand years younger than fireworks, the traditional aerial extravaganza.

“The F111’s ‘dump and burn’ routine was such a popular part of Riverfire over the years, that when the jets were retired, we were keen to find a new kind of sky show to complement the fabulous fireworks display,” explained Jono.

The answer was an outdoor laser and light show staged literally in mid-air over the river in front of South Bank and from the high-rise buildings and bridges surrounding the site. Oracle Attractions created the laser and water components while the searchlights were provided by Production Resource Group (PRG) and some LED pars from the ULA Group. Once again Tony Assness was creative director with John Rayment as lighting designer with laser and water design by Glenn Turner and Tara W Cox of Oracle Attractions.

The show itself was certainly a spectacle, and the crowds were large and appreciative. For viewers along the South Bank riverfront, the action took place mid-river where water jets created a screen on which laser images were focused. Meanwhile, lasers and searchlights atop five city high-rise buildings plus QPAC and searchlights on the adjacent Victoria Bridge cut across the sky creating a city-wide backdrop to the foreground action that could be seen for kilometres around. The lights and lasers were tightly synchronised to a soundtrack which was amplified across the Parklands and narrowcast by Southern Cross Austereo on 95.3MHz FM to reach viewers further afield.

CITY-WIDE RIGGING CHALLENGES

Very few shows require a bump-in to the tops of skyscrapers, rigging points slung under freeway bridges or power delivered mid-river, but for Jono, this was par for the course. “There were lots of man-hours carrying rigging and fixtures up to the top of buildings,” he said. The greatest challenge, though was strapping the 5W laser systems to the freeway pylons out over the water.

“The laser heads weigh only about 20kg, so it was practical to set those up over the water, but getting massive searchlights hoisted up there just wasn’t practical.” The searchlights are on solid ground, as is the generator which powers the under-freeway lights and lasers.

The great white span of Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge defines the Western boundary of South Bank and so was a natural to form part of the Santos City of Lights display. Across two back-breaking nights, crews installed first the 300 metres of 125A cable and arched trusses, then hoisted into position the dozen 140kg, 5kW Big Lites made by French company Zap Technology. These lights defined the show ‘arena’ superbly and were powered by a 150kVA generator located just under the control room. “It was a big exercise,” commented Jono, the master of understatement.

COMPLETELY UNDER CONTROL

Jono took me to the control room located in a demountable atop the old Victoria Bridge abutment which has a perfect view across the river display area. Inside are three control points, for lasers, lighting and audio which come together to run up to five shows a night.

Lighting control is dominated by two GrandMAs. One is on-line with the second running as backup. Just outside the window hangs the aerial for the 2.4GHz Radio DMX system. Three weeks before the show the crew spent a whole day measuring signal strength in the various locations to see what antennae were needed and to confirm that reception across the far flung rig. “There were a few teething problems with interference, but everything settled down nicely,” according to Jono. With the furthest link located 890m from the control point, you get the strong impression that the time spent on RF testing paid off handsomely.

Lighting crews came in at 3pm every day to run tests and lamp strikes so that there was time to fix any problems before the 7pm first show. That allowance may seem excessive until you consider that the technical elements of this show were spread across an area of nearly a kilometre square, and the lighting crews needed to visit five city buildings, the Victoria Bridge and QPAC each day.

The laser show used six full colour lasers and two high-powered green lasers all built by Oracle in Sydney. The LivePro controller, also developed by Oracle, ran from a pair of laptops across a closed network to each of the laser devices. The network was implemented through a set of microwave links to a server on the far side of the river and then distributed via Cat5 UTP to the individual laser units under the freeway.

Lighting and lasers were both locked to the time code derived from the CD player running the soundtrack. Timecode was recorded for 15 seconds before audio start so that all elements could confirm timecode lock before the show kicked off.

STICKING TO SCHEDULE

Every night either Jason Waide (Technical Manager) or James Merryman (Project Co-ordinator) ensured that all teams were ready and got set to call the show. Timing was critical, as the show needed to kick off at exactly 19:00 and 20:00 hours Telstra time.

If Santos City of Lights were to run late, the Brisbane Festival tech team were required to notify Air Services Australia and CASA. With high-powered lasers and searchlights probing the sky, the potential danger to air traffic could not be ignored. “We involved CASA very early in the planning process,” Jono observed. “And they were tremendously helpful all the way.”

Jono laughs as I ask if he’s thought about next year. “I’ve been focused on 2012 since the first week the Festival opened,” he chuckles. He’s spent a day analysing, deconstructing and brainstorming with Creative Director Tony Assness. But when I ask how he’ll top this show, he simply gives a sly smile.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.