CMT was approached by event organizers Mask Event Design & Productions to supply the design and technical infrastructure for an impressive opening show to kick-start the four-day World Travel Market exhibition running at ExCel - sited across the River Thames from the Mills. CMT’s Gino and Ram Malocca and Tim Fothergill jumped at the opportunity to stage the event, which had many technical and logistical challenges, and also included unorthodox live elements such as speedboats and helicopters.
For lighting, they called in the unflappable Darren Parker and his company DPL Production Lighting - no strangers to working in galvanizing environments. Parker’s section of the 15-minute show was to produce wild beam effects from a row of automated fixtures lined up along the jetty wall of Millennium Mills.
Two faces of the building - the North and West - were used as a massive 150m projection surface for an animated video show, which depicted travel scenes from around the world. The event culminated in an incendiary firework and pyro display by Fantastic Fireworks, with explosives located all along the front of Millennium Mills, and spanning the nearby footbridge, which became engulfed in a 100 metre silver waterfall.
DPL’s lighting scheme utilized 12 Martin MAC 2000s, encased in weather domes, spaced along the Millennium Mills jetty (itself one of the first landmark projects to use ferro-concrete at the turn of the 19th century). Two 7k space cannons were added for extra punch, and all the fixtures were controlled by an Avolites Pearl, programmed by Parker from the ExCel side of the river. DMX signals were then beamed through the wireless link to the fixtures, along with those from a Watchout video control system.
Parker also rigged the two speedboats up with their own lightshows - one in red and one in blue, comprising Par 56s and a selection of disco effects, run in ‘Auto’ mode.
Two 40W YAG lasers, supplied and engineered by Continental Lasers’ Brian Bennington, were positioned at either end of the Mills, blasting out across the dock. These were operated by Darren Howard with original programming by Gino Malocca, run from a Pangolin PC-based control system.
Six of the eight Barco ELM R12 projectors, supplied by PSL, were sited on the ExCel centre’s lorryway access road, running the length of the 400 metre building. Each of the three pairs was doubled up to produce a single 30m high x 37m wide image on the Mills’ fascia. The fourth set of projectors was rigged on a 50ft reach scissor lift on the Mills’ side of the river, beaming onto its west face. The full width of the dramatic video image, including both north and west faces, was 150 metres.
CMT used a 5-channel Dataton Watchout system for video control, supplied by Go Fusion and Ruthless Media. The images were compiled on the production machine and downloaded to PCs controlling each separate screen/pair of projectors. The Watchout system allows for any source to be mapped to any output destination. It was programmed by Tim Fothergill and also used to blend the edges of the four separate images together - into one seamless picture.
The sound system was supplied by Dobson Sound, engineered and operated by Tone Ferne, with assistance from Dobson’s system engineers Will King and Robb Walles. Faced with a viewing area measuring 400m in width by just 10m in depth, Ferne opted for a system comprising 24 blocks of d&b C7 subs, each topped with an E9 cabinet, running the full length of the ExCel esplanade. The system was controlled via a Midas Heriatge 1000 desk, with MiniDisc and
