What started out as a single event 15 years ago has blossomed into the Ice Cross Downhill World Championship Series. For the fourth year in a row, one of these sporting spectacles took place in downtown St. Paul, MN on Jan. 24, 2015, where an estimated 140,000 spectators got right into the up close action of this sport. A plethora of the worlds’ fastest skaters go head to head down a narrow track skating at speeds of 40 mph. While the races themselves were exciting, I couldn’t help wondering who and how a company can erect this gigantic structure along with all the lighting, video and audio it takes to put on a world televised event like this.
“It all starts by walking the field with Christian.” proclaims Andrew Markey, self proclaimed “Executioner and Chief” of Hangman Productions, a special events company based out of Vancouver, BC and Bellingham, WA. Christian Papillion has been designing the tracks for Red Bull Crashed Ice since 2011. In 2012, Markey’s group was brought in to construct the actual track alone and the two forces met. As the two walk the potential site for the next Red Bull Crashed Ice event, they picture the physical layout of the track for this year. They walk and talk ideas, with Papillion covering the artistic side while Andrew chimes in with the logistics. Between the two, they come up with a game plan to get all the jumps, chicanes, rollers and hairpin curves into the new track. Christian keeps it all in this perspective, “Red Bull always has to be in constant evolution.” That basically means that the show will never be the same twice. Hence every town brings a new site survey.
While erecting the set in 2012, Markey saw room for improvement in production, as he does every year. Fine-tuning an event of this size can involve a lot of trial and error, and the learning curve is not too steep after four years in St. Paul. However, the next set up for the Hangman crew is in Edmonton, Alberta Canada in March. Andrew and his team will be on site for 45 days, from the first day of load in until a week after the race when it’s all torn down. Red Bull’s Crashed Ice competition has never taken place there, so it’s a new field to explore. The width and length of the tracks may vary from town to town. The length of the track is 470 meters (1,542 feet) for this St. Paul event, but some of Papillion’s track designs have been close to 600 meters in length. The skaters race down in four-man heats against each other during the individual competitions as well as in three — two-man teams during the team challenge. They wear full-on protective gear similar to a hockey player, as it’s pretty easy to get slammed into the sideboards while trying to outduel your opponent. The skaters don’t intentionally try and run each other into the boards, but it is very much a contact sport, as every inch counts. The winner of each race is determined by whoever’s skate crosses the finish line first.
The Design
Once Andrew and Christian have consulted on a design that will traverse a hill, it’s time to get it on paper. Markey does the initial drawings in Sketch-Up. Through the use of the Google Earth app, one can obtain a topographical layout of the grassy hill that leads from a cathedral straight down the hill to the finish line at the bottom. On top of that, the designer outlines the ice track itself as the two of them have agreed on. The track itself is built from scaffolding before the wood is attached. Part of the design logistics requires figuring out how much and what size scaffolding they need to build the track. Engineers take Markey’s SketchUp drawing and transcribe it into Vectorworks or AutoCAD software to calculate all the steel pieces necessary to erect the structure safely. The engineers must take into account all kinds of safety factors, such as the inertia presented as several skaters whip around corners in a tight group. In St. Paul this year, the starting gates for the race were located right in front of the doors to the Cathedral of St. Paul, the city’s iconic hilltop landmark. The 100-year-old, 3,000-capacity church, still open to the public every day and home to weekly Catholic services and confession, has granite steps attached in front of it and they would have to hold the weight of the scaffold. In previous races here, the configuration favored a tall starting structure off to the side so this was not an issue. But one look at the marvelously lit cathedral and you know the TV guys would love to see that as the backdrop. So Markey must somehow unearth the plans (luckily they had done some remodeling of those steps in recent years) and had engineers figure out what building materials were buried under the stone and how much weight he could rest on it without any structural damage. This is just one of a thousand items the producer has to investigate before he could even place a bid on the project.
Once the scaffold is in place, a team of Hangman employees start applying the wood in straight runways, drop off jumps, hairpin turns and even a 90-degree peak right by the finish line. The plywood material is cut and molded into curved sections with precise cuts. By putting notches in strategic places on the plywood, the crew is able to bend the wood into place for rolling bumps and sharp angles on the track. The sides of the track are necessary to keep skaters from exiting the track, thus going right into the fans on the sides. The sides are made up of white puck board, the same material used in hockey rinks. All of the materials are sourced locally. Just the amount of wood on the track itself takes up two full 53-foot flatbed trailers.
After the wood is in place, it’s time to make the ice. The crew lines the entire track with these cooling mats that are rolls of rubber with tubes built in them. The rolls are attached to four giant “Chillers” that pump cold salt water though them constantly. Each chiller requires 400 amps of 3-phase power. Once the track is covered and the coolers are functioning, teams of ice makers walk back and forth just spraying water on the mats for a full week. By the time the races begin, the ice is more than six inches thick.
The Production
Building the track may take the most time; but there are still the camera platforms, lighting towers, speaker arrays and video screens to assemble around the site. When you have a structure that’s longer than four football fields, one needs to figure out a lot of logistics. That’s why Andrew calls on Scott McPhee and his company, 10Eighty Productions Inc., to figure out what’s needed. From the first walk-through of the field, the team has to note how more than 100,000 people will hear the announcers and rock music, how everything will be lit for camera, and where the video walls would be stationed so everyone there can watch all the action, not just the part where the skaters rush by. But the most important part is how do they get all the DMX, audio and video signals everywhere as well as power?
“Fiber, over two miles of it,” explains Scott. “We made a conscientious decision that the smartest way to run all the signal was to have it run right under the scaffolding holding the ice track. We then jumped off those main runs to get to the 13 lighting towers, three video screens and the speaker arrays. Of course, we used hundreds of cable ramps and flew stuff from tree branches to scaffold towers whenever we could. Other times we used wireless DMX to get the signal past obstacles like the road of traffic that ran under the starting ramp.“
The power requirements were rather large, as one would expect. They start out by renting two large twin pack generators that spit out 1600 kVA each — more than 4,000 amps of power. In past Crashed Ice games, the crew ran hundreds of yards of 4/0 cable for power. Scott switched things around this year. By strategically placing step down transformers in various positions on site, he ran 480 volts straight from the generators to them. Then he branched out from them to feed 110/208 volts of 3-phase power to the amp racks and AC distros all the vendors brought with them. This cut his feeder cable needs in half. In addition, they utilized four more hard-wired services on site — one of which is down by the finish line where all the control rooms were assembled. A couple years ago, Markey had the local power company install a dedicated service to this area. Once a year, the Hangman crew members come to town, and they resurrect that service by installing a temporary meter, using this shore power. The power Scott ordered ran at a safe 60 percent of capacity for this live event.
McPhee serves as the TD of the show. The logistics he deals with include getting the best quality gear for the buck, local or not. He first has to detail all the audio and video specs, which can take a month crunching numbers. On top of that, he sources out the labor and man-hours needed to accomplish the tasks of putting it all together. This may seem like a basic task, but Scott reminds me of the working conditions. He simply cannot allow workers to work outside in the harsh Minnesota winter for any long length of time. Instead, he places them on a schedule that included time to thaw out periodically. “It’s an asset that many of the crew hail from the Vancouver area. They as well as the local crew we hire are used to the cold conditions. But still, we have to rotate the players in and out.”
The production for this show goes out to bid every year, so Scott and Andrew have to get their monetary figures in line months before the event. Because this event has been running for several years, they have a fairly set budget before they go in to figuring out the RFP (Request for Proposal) from each vendor. The audio and video vendors may change, but it comes down to which one can satisfy all the specs that Scott has laid out. Certain companies may think they have a better idea of how to do something, but they lack the experience Scott and Andrew have with this event. If they don’t follow McPhee’s technical specs to a T, they may not be back the next year. The one constant vendor they don’t worry about is the lighting company. One of the better decisions Markey has made since becoming the overall producer of this event has been to maintain a relationship with Ian Gordon of Christie Lites.
The Lighting
Christie Lites has been providing the lights for the last three years for Crashed Ice in St. Paul, so each year they have evolved a little in the scheme of how to lay everything out. Although Ian Gordon is based in the company’s Vancouver, BC location, the Christie crew members actually came from seven different shops across North America. This year, Markey elevated former lighting TD for the St. Paul event, Paul “Arlo” Guthrie, to assume the LD duties. According to Markey, there are three items that need to be lit. First and foremost, the track needs a nice even wash. Next, the surrounding architecture needs to all be illuminated for the cameras. Lastly, the crowd needs to be lit evenly.
To light the track, the designers used a tried-and-true design — placing more than 800 500W Halogen light fixtures in the side puck boards, spaced every four feet. They bathed the entire track in a warm tungsten color and served as the primary wash. To do this in a way to protect both the skaters and the fixtures, the crew cut squares into the puck board sides, fastened the light fixtures to the outside and covered the hole with Plexiglas.
“Originally, we explored the idea of using a white light LED fixture for the side track lighting,” Guthrie says. While that would have the benefit of sharply reducing the required power and also bathe the track in a bright white hue, matching all the discharge and LED fixtures in the towers, heat from the halogens has the advantage of warming the work crew. They also help water from freezing on the sideboards, so the switch to LED fixtures was put on the back burner.
Weather is the biggest issue at this gig. This year, the event was blessed with a lack of snow, and the weather was fairly warm in comparison to previous years. For the 2014 event, held Feb. 27, the lighting fixtures were challenged by the elements, and Christie Lites was looking at a possible loss of money after the cost of returning fixtures to working condition negated any profits. All parties reached a financial solution to help offset that loss, but the lighting company had to put their thinking caps on this year to avoid the same scenario. Gordon sat down with the other parties to figure out the gear list to fit in the budget. The majority of fixtures used were either Martin moving lights or ETC conventional fixtures. This year, they chose more than 100 new LED fixtures to illuminate the crowd and architecture. With the advent of Martins’ Quantum wash light this year, Guthrie had the LED fixture he needed to spit out enough lumens to replace many of the discharge lights utilized in years past. These lights required less power, but they also didn’t emit much heat to melt snow should they experience inclement weather. Christie and crew chief extraordinaire Mike Wilkinson came up with a cool plan. They designed and fabricated more than 260 special covers that protected the fixtures while allowing them to emit full lumens in a 360° radius.
There were 13 lighting towers positioned around the track as well as three rooftop locations where cranes lifted trusses of lights into place. The tower lighting also help Guthrie light several key positions, like some of the tight turns, where additional lights were needed to pick up the skaters for the cameras. Additional floor fixtures, meanwhile, helped illuminate buildings. Each scaffold tower contained several Quantum Washes as well as Martin MAC 2000 and Viper Wash fixtures. Guthrie also added Elation Platinum Beam fixtures to light the sky for camera shots. From half a mile away, these lights looked amazing, emitting searchlight-type beams. Elation ELAR Pars and ETC Source Four units were used to fill in dark holes along the track and as key lights for the starting and ending positions. Atomic strobes and Chroma-Q V12 Phosphor fixtures added the razzle-dazzle for the cameras at the finish line. The setup also included 1000W Bambinos for an even wash at the finish line and for the interview areas.
Along with the track, the Cathedral was a visual centerpiece at the event, with arching architectural features and a circular stained glass window serving as the backdrop along with the inflatable Red Bull surround at the starting line. In years past, it was a struggle to get enough backlight to make this stained glass “pop” for the cameras. This year, gaffer Thomas Franchett and Guthrie brought in a single 16 by 8 foot, 8K HMI Airstar helium balloon to ensure proper illumination. Just like it sounds, these fixtures resemble a giant elliptical shaped floating balloon, internally lit with two 4k HMI lights. The balloon serves as a giant diffuser while spreading the white light evenly across the stained glass.
Ground control for all the key operators was located down by the finish line. This custom space housed the grandMA2 consoles that Guthrie operated himself as well as cameras and the video directors. To ensure that his cast was protected from the elements, Markey designed a new command center. He had a local company build a two-story structure he designed out of four 20-foot sea containers, with doors and windows installed. Building it locally saved the expense of shipping it from his home. It will travel to Edmonton for the next show.
The finish line itself was in need of some serious pizazz for eye candy. The design team took advantage of the large stock of Chroma-Q Color Force in the Christie Lites inventory to build them into the walls surrounding the bottom of the run. They were prominently displayed chasing in rainbow colors as well as functioning as strobe fixtures as each racer crossed the finish line. The Color Force fixtures were also utilized as clean white lite illuminating the after race interview area.
The event looked flawless as the cameras caught all the action for live TV. Crowd participation was evident as huge roars went up whenever the skaters sped past the audience lining the majority of the track. There were no barricades, and the audience could actually try to reach out and touch the competitors, if they were foolish enough.
Everything but the track was loaded out within 48 hours after the last race, and the production team got a week off before with a new track for the Crashed Ice event set for Edmonton in mid-March.
Red Bull Crashed Ice
St. Paul MN, Jan. 2015
Production Cos:
- Hangman Productions/Andrew Markey
- 10Eighty Productions/Scott McPhee
- Christie Lites/Ian Gordon (Lighting)
- Large Screen Video Imaging LLC/Cameron Brown (Video Screens)
- Lyon Video (Video Cameras)
Gear
2 grandMa2 Full consoles
1 grandMA2 Light console
120 Martin MAC Quantum Wash fixtures
60 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
34 Martin MAC Viper Wash DX fixtures
20 Martin Mac 2000 Wash XB fixtures
6 Martin MAC III Profiles
18 Martin Atomic strobes
68 Elation Platinum Beam 5Rs
124 ETC Source Four Pars
46 Chroma-Q V12 Phosphor fixtures
34 ETC Source Four Lekos
24 Elation ELAR Pars
36 Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlasts
30 Studio Due City Color LED fixtures
24 1000W Bambino Fresnels
800 500W Halogen track lights
200 Custom snow covers for flown fixtures
60 Custom snow enclosures for ground fixtures
1 HMI Airstar internally lit balloon (16’x8,’ 8K)
14 Dimmers (24ch)
10 Christie HD power distro racks
10 Sealed distro enclosures (main & backup fiber network)
20 Pathport Octo nodes
20 Christie fiber switches
1 Fiber cable network (12,000’)
42 Sticks of Christie F-type truss
46 CM motors
