From July 30 to Aug. 7, the 14-acre stretch of beach south of the Huntington Pier was the site of what has become the world’s largest youth culture and action sports festival.
700,000 Visitors
With free admission, the US Open of Surfing drew an estimated 700,000 people over the course of its nine-day shoreline takeover to present a collection of extreme sports competitions, youth fashion shows, and live performances.
Staking its claim in presenting the largest free festival in the U.S., IMG Action Sports, a division of IMG worldwide, organized and promoted the event once again, defending their title as the global leader in sports entertainment.
Due to a scheduling conflict, the event’s usual site manager was unavailable this year. But Matt Newsome from IMG stepped in to take control of the annual production’s biggest year yet.
City of Tents
Along with their major sponsors — Nike, Converse, and Hurley — IMG literally created a small city of tents in the sand, with over 200 tents being used for interactive exhibits, merchandise sales and promotional purposes.
To complete this circus in the sand, the event featured a custom skate bowl for the Converse Coastal Carnage skate competition, a full concert stage for the teenage “Walk the Walk” fashion show and live music performances by acts including MGMT, Jimmy Eat World and The Sounds.
The event also required a collection of different judges’ platforms and seating areas for the final contest in the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour.
110 Semis of Gear
To make this vision a reality, the site required a six-day load-in with several different production companies’ cooperation. The numbers were impressive: 110 semis of gear; two custom skate bowls made specifically for the event; three miles of cable; four live TV sets; eight forklifts; 20 mules; 22 office trailers of production crew; and a production crew of more than 150.
Classic Tents project manager Paul Amarillas supervised the construction of the tent mini-village. It included 60 booths, a 2,500-square-foot “brand experience” area, a 7,500-square-foot retail store, 70,000 square-feet of flooring, 100,000 square-feet of banners and 140,000 square-feet of tenting.
These temporary structures housed a wide variety of sponsors’ promotional activities, with Nike and Hurley operating full retail stores out of the temporary dwellings, Nike 6.0 featured an interactive extreme sports exhibit for visitors, and Red Bull again provided “Energy Station” with liquid refreshments.
One and a half miles of ADA-approved walkway also needed to be constructed to connect the commune of marketing sponsors. Because the event was free and open to the public, engineered drawings were held very strictly to code, and any structures to which the public had access were examined with intense scrutiny, with measurements verified down to the closest millimeter.
The Concert Stage
All Access Staging & Productions was responsible for the 60 by 44 foot concert stage, augmented with a 60-foot thrust for the “Walk the Walk” fashion show runway and a 28-foot-high truss grid with a 60-foot-wide scrim. Project managers Jeff Haas and Brandon Burris managed the construction.
Challenges included leveling the structure on the viscous sand, solved with plywood to keep the support legs from sinking and keep the stage framing square.
The grid, which was of the utmost concern after the recent events with tragic weather, was hunkered down using 50,000 pounds of concrete ballasts. The four upstage and four downstage legs of the structure were bolted into the ballasts, with two crossing guy lines on both stage left and right.
Video and Crowd Control
After the $25,000 beauty pageant prize was given away, the thrust had to be struck and removed to make room for an estimated 140,000 concertgoers who had arrived to see MGMT. Although this was a minor changeover, the number of people that filled in the newly-created front of house area required plenty of downstage crowd control. While no injuries were reported at the show, and the All Access aluminum Versacade contained the crowd in front of the stage, five pieces of bike barricade were toppled and trampled during the performance.
With so many thousands in attendance, Screenworks NEP provided seven large LED video displays for live visuals of the athletic competitions. The displays included high-res Toshiba 10 millimeter screens for the pier’s 9-by-12-foot display, supported by an All Access base. Two additional 8-by-10-foot displays were hung behind the main stage for I-Mag. Screenworks also provided an 8-by-14-foot display for the merchandise area and three other 8-by-10-foot screens to bring the skating, surfing and BMX action closer to the crowds.
This year was the annual event’s first attempt at live broadcasts, with Ross providing their Xpression 2D/3D CG and Motion Graphics System to capture the event. Transition Productions produced the footage, which was carried by Fuel TV in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Europe. The event was also streamed live on the Internet, bringing the action on the beach to the world. And along with the striking visuals, this was also the first year that viewers from afar could listen in, with the top surfers in the world miked for audio using waterproof wireless gear.
