Lighting and Production Designer Toby Harding was appointed to provide an engaging experience for the spectators before matches begin each evening using lights, sound and video.
“Specifically for the sound and light show each evening, we wanted to allow our lighting programmers and animators to be creative and show off the technology in the room,” said Toby. “The majority of the time it is there as a secondary element to support either the tennis or ceremonies through the event. This is a chance to see what it can do while providing an additional element to the spectator experience.”
Toby’s biggest challenge was the fact that the venue is used as an open-air arena for the majority of the day.
“This limits where we can put fixtures and what time we can have for programming,” he clarified. “We have to be very efficient with our use of any “dark time” and this often means some very short windows at the start of the day, end of the day or sometimes both.”
The biggest and only set element is the 360 degrees LED wall supplied by Mediatec that wraps the court at 2.4m high. Apart from the court itself, this has the biggest presence in everything they do outside of play.
“There is always content created for ceremonies and performances,” said Toby. “For the sound and light show, the animators get to see pre-viz versions of the lighting so that colours can complement and to give each medium a chance to stand out by itself as well as work with each other.”
Programming was done by both Matt Jones and Tim Newman; Tim working on the sound and light show with Matt doing all performances and ceremonies. Programming for ceremonies and performances are a little pressured, as they have to work around court availability. Players need to practice, so they are often rehearsing early morning, and are having to program the show as they see the rehearsal happen in real-time.
“Often we aren’t afforded the amount of time in the space you might always like,” said Matt. “We work around this, by using an onsite pre-vis setup to finesse some elements.”
The rig was supplied by PRG and consisted of 32 x Claypaky Scenius Unico, 32 x Claypaky Mythos 2, 48 x Claypaky Sharpy and 64 x Robe Spiider LED Wash. Control was an MA Lighting grandMA2 full size and light as well as two MA Lighting NPUs. There were six Look Solution Unique Hazers providing atmospherics.
In the upper bowl of Rod Laver Arena, there were eight trusses on the back wall, each with six Sharpys and four Spiiders. The remainder of the rig was spread over ten trusses surrounding the court. This provided excellent coverage to be able to light the audience in the arena, as well as be able to light the court area and any presentation area that was used on the court surface.
“This allowed for us to be able to evenly light any performance on the court, as well as be able to evenly light the ceremonies areas after the finals,” added Matt. “The Scenius Unicos were particularly useful for this. Their bright output, flexible and accurate shaper system was perfect for lighting both performances and ceremonies, as well as allowing us to make a feature of the playing court itself. We made sure to fully feature, where possible, the playing court, by using the shapers to accurately cut the beam into the shape of each of the boxes that make up the court. This created some great looks for both the sound and light show, as well as the musical performances. The Mythos were great for being able to create some texture on the court area and the audience space, while the output and richness of colour out of the Spiiders were perfect for the space.”
Matt was particularly pleased with Gordi’s anthem performance saying she was beautifully and evenly light and it was rewarding to see the result on his preview monitor.
Stadium Photos: John O’Neil
