POEM OF THE ETERNAL CITY

from TPMEA #038 - Oct/Nov 2022

AFRICA NEWS

AN AMBITIOUS NEW TOURIST CENTRE OPENS TO MUCH FANFARE WITH AN IMPRESSIVE PRODUCTION TO MATCH. TPMEA CATCHES UP WITH THE TEAMS AT MANDYLIGHTS AND AUDITORIA TO FIND OUT MORE…

Famed for being a key location on the Silk Road, the historic Uzbeki city of Samarkand has launched a brand-new tourist centre that aims to attract a new generation of traveller to the ancient city. A completely purposebuilt, self-contained city, Silk Road Samarkand centres around a man-made canal and features world-class facilities including hotels, business centres, restaurants and an amphitheatre.

To celebrate the opening of this landmark facility, the President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, was invited to attend a grand opening ceremony, which was produced and directed by ABV Studio Events.

Taking place in the Eternal City – the centrepiece of the 260-hectare complex – the ceremony comprised a Presidential address followed by a theatrical performance featuring an extensive cast of dancers and musicians, including UK artist, Sami Yusuf. Supporting the show was an equally impressive technical team, including Mandylights and Auditoria.

Mandylights’ Tom Edwards took up the story, explaining how he found himself on this unique project. “I got introduced to the Production Manager, Tarmo Krimm, who after explaining the scope of the project, got our whole team really quite excited.”

Due to the size of the project, a four-person lighting team was required, which Mandylights provided in-house. Managing Director, Richard Neville designed the show along with Edwards. Melbourne-based Liam Ashton gaffed and called followspots, while Tom Wightwick attended as Associate Lighting Designer. “We went from first round creative chats with Andrei Boltenko – the

Creative Director – to being on stage in just over four weeks, which was a mammoth undertaking,” explained Neville.

Adopting a round-the-clock design process, Mandylights utilised its identical previsualisation suites in the UK and Australia simultaneously to develop the lighting design and programming. “All visual vendors were using Syncronorm Depence2, which meant we had a great workflow with other creative stakeholders from the beginning,” Edwards added.

Ashton was the first of the Mandylights team onsite, touching down in Samarkand two weeks before the planned show day of 22 July. He worked with the outstanding multinational lighting crew ahead of the rest of the team’s arrival a week later. Programming continued around the clock both in a hotel suite and on site during the very short nights, which offered only six hours of total darkness.

An impressive 30m-wide revolving stage featured a four-storey structure based on the original Uzbek Ulugh Beg Observatory. The show was split into 17 episodes and highlighted traditional dance, music, history and folklore with a spectacular mix of pyrotechnics, video mapping and surrounding lighting and audio elements.

Neville described the lighting requirements as “a mixup of concert and theatrical disciplines, where very intimate moments needed to be created in a very large physical space with uncompressed accuracy and consistency.”

The lighting setup featured four 24m-high FOH towers adorned with Claypaky Scenius Unicos to provide reliable and versatile front key light, as well as Claypaky Stormy strobes and Robe RoboSpot followspots. Front wash and audience wash were also provided by 20 Martin MAC Viper Performances, which were positioned on the top floor balcony of the observatory. More Clakypaky Scenius Unico and Mini-B fixtures were deployed in floor positions around the observatory, as well as Claypaky Mythos either side of the observatory stairs.

“Every fixture in the rig worked hard; from the footlights to towers of front light,” noted Edwards. “Precise pickups were required to work around intricate projection effects and isolate single performers among dozens of dancers with throws of up to 60m outdoors and exposed to the elements. Almost every preset position incorporated shutters and precise focus detail – a challenge in the windy outdoor conditions.” Edwards incorporated several macros in his

32 TECH PROFILE

“To deliver a project like this completely in-house is very satisfying... This was a perfect case study for us where our international team delivered an impressive large-scale design in limited time with a 24-hour workflow.”

Tom Edwards, Mandylights

programming to update the dozens of palettes from different reference points around the set to ensure that marks were hit each night.

Alongside the theatrical lighting, the design also incorporated more traditional concert lighting elements, including Light Sky AquaBeams at the rear of the site to provide “some big overhead moments and add texture into the sky above the stage”. The show used MA Lighting grandMA3 full size consoles with MA NPUs.

One of the biggest considerations was making sure that the lighting levels balanced not just for the live show but also for TV. “That was paramount for the client,” Edwards stated.

“Balancing with key light was delicate. Luke Chantrell was looking after the vision balance to ensure a consistent key light level and temperature was across the whole structure.” The most pleasing aspect of the delivery for Edwards was the fact that Mandylights was able to deliver entirely in-house without the need for any additional freelancers. “I am proud of us as a company to be able to deliver the project at a time when everyone is so busy,” he reflected.

“To be able to deliver a project like this completely in-house is very satisfying. We’ve invested heavily in our own offices, staff, synchronised pre-vis suites, MA3 control and Depence2 software, and this was a perfect case study for us where our international team delivered an impressive large-scale design in limited time with a 24-hour workflow.”

‘IT WAS AMAZING TO BE A PART OF’ The audio requirements for the ceremony were handled by Auditoria. Led by Scott Willsallen, the team comprised: Mix Engineer, Ethan Curry; Replay Operators, Luis Miranda and Joe Callister; and Systems Engineer, Martin Dineley. Willsallen explained that the company’s brief was simply to “make the show sound amazing, and do so on an extremely short timeframe”.

Willsallen first heard about the project from Sami Yusuf who, as well as performing on show night, was also the Composer. “Sami and I have worked on some pretty memorable shows together including his amazing concert at Al Wasl Plaza during Expo 2020,” he explained. “Sami and I had a call with Andrei Boltenko, who was the Creative Director and produced the whole show. I’d previously worked with Andrei on the Sochi 2014 Olympic Ceremonies. The original call was about a completely different show which after some time morphed into the Silk Road show.”

The Auditoria team quickly got started on ideas and as soon as they had a confident idea of the show and audience area, they finalised an

immersive design for pricing by select contractors. “We had two audio contractors onboard; Agora from Dubai for the control system and part of the loudspeaker system and Live Sound Agency from Moscow for additional loudspeakers,” Willsallen outlined. “Equipment moved very quickly to site and the load in was completed in only a couple of days to be ready for rehearsals. It was a massive effort from everyone on the project to get the show ready for the start of rehearsals.”

Working closely with Yusuf and Boltenko, the team travelled to Tashkent for creative meetings before heading on to Samarkand for an inspection of the site. “It was clear from Andrei’s creative intentions and Sami’s compositions that this was a very ambitious immersive experience. We broke the action down into its parts and designed loudspeaker systems to serve each part.”

The main goals of the audio design were to provide localisation to the audience “so their ears can tell them where to look”, and to combine the live and playback instrumentation into a coherent and enveloping mix of music. To that end, Auditoria designed an immersive L-Acoustics sound system featuring 22 Syva, 48 KARA, six K2, eight KIVA II, 40 5XT, 24 SB28, eight X4i, four 108P and a host of LA 12X amplifiers. Two DiGiCo Quantum 338 consoles were used for control, while 16 channels of Shure Axient digital microphones, 10 channels of Shure PSM1000 transmitters and 160 PSM1000 receivers were deployed. “We had a choir around the top of the set throughout the show as well as special features such as trumpeters and sound effects. To provide localisation for the audience to the top of the set, we used a row of Syva along the top part of the set, each on a separate output from L-ISA,” Willsallen explained. “This allowed us to create a very wide and diffuse choral sound and take sound effects objects and move them to follow the projection content.”

There was also a 48-piece orchestra around the front edge of the stage with a 28-piece folk ensemble onstage. “We used a combination of KARA arrays either side of the folk orchestra as the main reinforcement and a distributed system of 5XTs to lift the sound of the orchestra.”

L-Acoustics L-ISA was used to impressive effect in ensuring seamless audio coverage despite the unusual challenge of a rotating set. “The whole set rotated, which took our loudspeakers with it, so we used L-ISA to counterrotate the sound,” Willsallen explained.

“This meant the sound effectively remained stationary, moving through various loudspeaker arrays distributed around the set. It would have been much easier to simply use a typical stereo loudspeaker system mounted either side of the set. However, that would have resulted in the audience hearing the sound from the nearest of the two arrays and not from the musicians or performers. The sound would have been detached from the performance, so we used L-ISA in reverse to make it work. It was very effective.”

Aside from the innovative use of L-ISA, Willsallen was pleased with the mix of live and pre-recorded instrumentation. “It worked really well and locally reinforcing the orchestra retained the spatial separation of instruments and sounded great,” he recalled, praising the “superhuman efforts” of the contractors, design team, managers and cast. “It was amazing to be a part of.” Photos: Mandylights www.mandylights.com www.auditoria.systems