The month-long 2010 FIFA World Cup, played in 10 stadiums around South Africa, culminated in a match between Spain and Holland at Soccer City Stadium in Soweto, Johannesburg, and in Spain's first World Cup victory by a score of 1-0. The final included 30-minute light and projection show seen by a capacity crowd of 94,000 at the stadium and millions worldwide. Along with dramatic lighting looks and large-scale projection on fabric covering the center of the field, the show featured a blend of contemporary African music, dance and theatre, with some in the cast of 740 operating life-sized elephant puppets and pop artist Shakira performing the 2010 World Cup theme song, "Waka Waka."
Working on behalf of the producers of the event, VWV group, Gearhouse South Africa provided all technical aspects, including rigging, power, sound, lighting and large-format projection, which was contracted out to E/T/C Paris and The Projection Studio. (See related story, page 31.)
Gearhouse's Hugh Turner and Tim Dunn designed the light show using large format video projections on the field. Mark Ransom was technical production manager, and Mik Auckland, David Proctor, David Zolkwer and Adrian Bourke from Jack Morton Worldwide supported the event as consultants.
The load-in for the closing ceremony, which included setting up two projection and four followspot platforms and involved as many as 140 working crew members, began as soon as the opening match in the month-long tournament had been played. Eyal Yehezkely and Bonni Meyer served as project managers, and Bill Lawford organized the arrival of eight containers of equipment by sea freight and another 50 metric tons by air freight.
The platforms were flown from the roof above the venue's upper concourse with 16 2-metric-ton motors for the spot platforms and 10 2-metric-ton motors for the projection platforms.
The lighting was designed and specified by Hugh Turner and Tim Dunn, with Dunn programming and operating the show. The rig included 468 of the most powerful moving lights Gearhouse could find, but the challenge went beyond just covering the large throw distances with blasts of output – it had to be balanced so the proceedings would look good on camera as well.
The lights were positioned around the stadium on four rings. Ring Four was the highest, flown on trusses at 50 meters high just below roof level, with Rings Three, Two and One descending down the stadium to another ring around the perimeter of the field of play.
Hanging lights on the lower rings involved the fabrication of special brackets to be attached to stadium structural elements. Ring Four lights were rigged on 12 trussing sections flown on 36 1-metric-ton CM chain hoists with long chains. Gearhouse Rigging undertook all the rigging involved in the show, which was coordinated by Kendall Dixon.
Gearhouse purchased Panther 2K and 5K searchlights and Vari*Lites for the show, and brought in 120 new Vari*Lites via South African distributor DWR. Vari-Lite 3000s, 3500s and VLXs were used on this show, along with Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 2500E ATs and Robe REDWash 3•192 LED wash lights.
Eight Gladiator and Super Trouper followspots made by Strong Entertainment Lighting were also deployed around the stadium on the four flown platforms.
Dunn used a MA Lighting grandMA system for control, which included three active grandMA consoles for programming and a fourth as a technical desk on the field during programming.
The lighting fixtures consumed a total of 30 DMX universes plus 10 spares. Chris Grandin from Gearhouse Media designed the lighting data control network. It used 4 Km of fiber optic cable, which was looped back on itself all the way around the stadium to provide live backup.
Dunn and Turner spent a week before the load-in pre-programming the show's basic building blocks on the MA Visualiser. They then spent seven overnight sessions in the stadium building the show and recording it on the grandMA, which contained hundreds of cues.
All production elements of the closing ceremony were run off generated power, supplied and distributed around the stadium by Gearhouse Power. Some 12 kilometers of mains cable weighing about 55 metric tons was shipped to South Africa by The Power Shop from Belgium in two 40-foot containers.
Gearhouse Power's Anthony Sackstein and his assistant Fodo Mathe spent five days walking the venue and calculating how to get sufficient power to all the places it was needed.
The venue was divided into three sections Roof East, Roof West and Field of Play, and then another four quadrants. At each of the four roof and lighting ring positions, they delivered a 400A supply broken into a 400A and 125 Amp distro. Behind each screen (north and south) were 250 Amp to each point, and another two 125A feeds where installed to feed projector and followspot platforms.
Four 400A feeds were run to the Field of Play for all the 5K Panthers, with four 48-way hot power distros feeding all the single-phase moving lights – the Robes and Vari*Lites.
Barloworld Power Systems in Johannesburg supplied eight generators to Gearhouse Power. Corrie Du Plooy managed the project with John Stander and Louie Pieterse on 24-hour standby. The generators were located outside the stadium in the technical compound, making the shortest bulk power run of 1500A 220m and the longest secondary run of 400A only 500 meters from the source.
Two sets of three 1000 KVA sets were synchronized to supply a backed-up feed of 1500 Amps per phase. The first of these two sets fed the lighting rings in the roof, the second set fed lighting and audio on the Field of Play. The last set of two synchronized generators fed the west side, with one of the longest cable runs of the installation at 500 meters. Ian Holmes and Ronnie Malaatjie served as the Gearhouse Power crew chiefs.
