Silo Park, located within Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, is an iconic public park incorporating parts of a former industrial site, and it is normally alive with outdoor concerts, restaurants, films and markets. In typical dour “Kiwi speak” the Silos are referred to as the 6-pack and the 1-pack
All of last century much of the Auckland waterfront was an industrial, polluted wasteland locked away from the public. Panuku, the Council’s regeneration arm, look after the site and understood the pioneer history of the reclamation.
During the redevelopment into a public park, the Silos were retained by the council as simple public gallery spaces noting much of the concrete used to build Auckland transited through these Silos from Golden Bay Cement in Nelson.
Auckland’s event supply industry decided to say thank you to the COVID workers and the whole of New Zealand, even though the country’s events industry has been hard hit by COVID with the cancellation of events right across NZ.
“It’s not just the artists themselves, it’s the event promoters, producers, the suppliers, the caterers, the sound, lighting and video guys, the cameramen, stagehands, the ushers,” commented event producer Pak Peacocke. “It’s an industry that has a lot of casual workers and it’s also an industry that already had a real problem with mental well being.”
It was decided to illuminate the Silos with inspirational projection work and singer Stan Walker was keen to perform.
“During initial planning, Auckland was a strikingly quiet world with people mainly indoors, no planes and little traffic against a dropping number of cases per day,” remarked Simon Garrett, lighting designer for the project. “We decided this activation best matched the result allowing a drop to level 2 freedom. Suddenly, we could have a haircut, buy wine, go to a hardware store, go to a café, hang out with a few mates and drink beer. But the timing of these drops from 4 to 3 and now to 2 is set by the cabinet in Wellington and signalled at the daily press conferences so it wasn’t a fixed date like an opening night.”
As the site is public space, the project team couldn’t take it over, fence it, and expect clear ground or access. Indeed they needed to keep the gig quiet to avoid any public gathering during setup, tests and recording.
Pak sussed a great stage location, set up on five 20ft maintenance containers being used by the Super Yacht refit crews. Projection towers and camera platforms were in locations they assumed would be clear to access on setup day.
The main lighting challenge was linking the talent, projection and location.
“We wanted to use 360-degree drone shots showing the site with the CBD to the east, harbour to the north and marina and harbour bridge to the west,” explained Simon. “And we got a beautiful if cold clear night for it. This is the lowest lighting level I have ever delivered to broadcast – the cameras are wide open with 3db of gain.”
Levels needed to be low, Simon figured projection needed to be around 100-120 lux or they would lose the city at night, noting the surfaces are curved and varied weathered concrete and the stills are ripped from the news and are pretty dark.
“The projection boys did such a good job on ripping and creating this content and, in my opinion, they had the biggest job,” added Simon. “I talked to the director, NEP tech crew and cameras and said “we would be going low” and blimey they all went there!
“Stan is lit at 9 fC from two small panel lights set at 70% @ 5600. We cut two. His backlight and the BVs front and backlight are RGBAW LED 40deg Pars set at between 12 -15%. I just lit the Silo and interior with the same Pars to make it an easy match. I used the HOG4 LEE colour picker for speed and consistency – 201,119,116 from memory.”
The team did the basic setup and ran a meter over it the night before. Spyglass stayed and lined up projectors till early morning. The next day they did a reset leading into dusk and rehearsed it once and ran it three times in 90 mins.
“And we got a beautiful if cold clear night for it,” said Simon. “Everyone smashed it and we wrapped at 7.31pm.”
Vision was relatively straight forward, but large so took time and planning. Spyglass utilised their Christie and Panasonic projection platforms to pull off the projection onto the Silos. They projected on to all four sides of the 6-pack Silo that was 26m tall, and 180 degrees of the larger 1-pack Silo. The challenge was getting the towers in the right places to avoid as many trees and light poles as possible.
“We used 20 projectors in total, with a combined light output of 360,000 lumens,” commented Geof Walsh, Spyglass’ Production Manager. “With a surface area of over 2600sqm we double stacked for brightness giving us approximately 100 lux light levels allowing for blends and overshoot whilst dealing with a large amount of ambient light.
Six multi-level scaffold towers that had their own media server and projector control all linked via a fibre backbone were built.
A cast of 12 hauled the 20 projectors into the six towers and ran system cabling in 4.5 hours, then the crew dropped down to four for the first line night. The second night of line up was needed to test content and tweak projectors. Meanwhile, the studio onsite was creating the content.
Nick Maddren looked after a fairly straight audio setup commenting that it helps that Stan Walker is such a professional. Stan’s tracks were run on a Qlab playback rig and the live stems were sent to the TV truck for NEP’s post-production mix. As this was not a public performance there was no audience PA required. Oceania Audio supplied Stan with his onstage monitoring with Shure PSM 1000 IEM’s and L-Acoustics 108p for stage fill monitoring. Hamish Able mixed the monitors for Stan and Cathal McDonagh rigged the system.
The Youtube upload is Take 3 with the opening drone shot edited in. You can view it HERE on ALIA YouTube channel.
Light To Unite Credit List
Alex Robertson – NZ Herald
Alistair Wilkinson – Seven Sharp
Andy Crump – Spyglass
Andy Gollings – Red Badge Security
Ariel
Arnaud Legouest – Spyglass
Auckland Council
Brendon Butt – NEP Broadcast Services
Camelspace
Cathal McDonagh – Oceania Audio
Chris Brokensha
Colin Liddell – Camelspace
Craig Goudie – GHL TempFence
David Champion – Stan Walker
Doug Boyd – NEP Broadcast Services
Doug Peacocke – NZME
Eithne Curran
Elliot Melgren – Empire Electrical
Felix Garrett – Oceania Lighting
Gareth Andrews – Spyglass
Geof Walsh – Spyglass
George Kaisala-Hadfield
Hamish Abel – Oceania Audio
Hannah McGrail – Miss Hannah
Imagezone NZ
Jacob Nansen
Jo Hartley – Vector Lights
Jurgens Potgieter
Kris Lee – Scafwrap
Leedia Zaia
Matt Tong – Oceania Lighting
Mayank Kumar
Michael Griffin – NEP Broadcast Services
Mick Spratling – Camelspace
Mike Bull – Ariel
Mike Price – Stage NZ
NEP Broadcast Services
Nick Maddren – Oceania Audio
Nigel Carpenter
NW Group
NZ Herald
Oceania Audio
Oceania Lighting
Oliver Pikin – NEP Broadcast Services
Oliver Crawshey – Empire Electrical
Pak Peacocke – The Show Business
Paul Nicoll – Panuku
Paul Stephenson – Spyglass
Phil McConchie – Camelspace
Piripi Menary
Rebecca Knox
Red Badge Security
Roman Yurovskiy
Ryan Haste – Ariel
Sam Peacocke – Ariel
Sam Scally – NEP Broadcast Services
Scafwrap
Sebastian Doyle
Shane Wilson – Motorsport Communications
Shaun Cattell – Oceania Lighting
Shaw Chan – Spyglass
Silika Isaia
Silo Park – Panuku
Simon Garrett – Oceania Lighting
Sita Stitchel – Oceania Lighting
Skylah Hewett
Spyglass
Stan Walker
Tania Loveridge – Heart Of The City
Taryn Kljakovic – Sony Music Stan Walker
Tawahinga Butt – NEP Broadcast Services
Ted Koopu
Tirau Wihongi
Tony Wilson
Vector Lights Auckland Harbor Bridge
Warren Field – NEP Broadcast Services
Yoontae Choi – NEP Broadcast Services
