It’s fun to walk past the amazing sites along the 8km Vivid Sydney Light Walk and view the spectacle of culture and art. Ever wondered what it’s like to work behind the scenes to bring these amazing animations to life?
Now in its 12th year, Vivid Sydney will transform the Harbour City into an illuminating fusion of creativity, innovation, and technology from Friday, 27 May to Saturday, 18 June, with more than 200+ events celebrating the essence of Sydney’s soul including its diversity, beauty, resilience, First Nations culture, and vibrant creative community.
Providing insightful access into what exactly goes on is TDC – Technical Direction Company, a super organised team of project managers, creative technologists, designers and engineers.
Pictured (Left to Right): Gill Minervini, Festival Director, Vivid Sydney; Karl Johnstone, Technical Project Manager, TDC; Brad Gander, Project Manager, Vivid Sydney; and, Michael Hassett, Founder and Managing Director.
“After 12 months of planning, our team are so excited to be back working on Vivid Sydney again. The project is a huge logistical and technical rollout for us. It is going to be bigger and brighter than ever. Vivid Sydney will showcase the largest projection mapping display at any single event ever in Australia,” enthused Alex Rendell, technical project manager at TDC.
TDC are illuminating buildings and performance stages with the latest technical advances in LED and projection design and mapping. TDC provides backbone technology for signage systems for new immersive experiences on the Vivid Sydney Light Walk. TDC LiveView technology will be in action with over 72 real-time digital way finders. TDC LiveView will guide the audience through the Vivid Sydney Light Walk based on real-time information from traffic management, police and emergency services to ensure a great audience experience.
Newly appointed Vivid Sydney Festival Director, Gill Minervini officially kicked off the technology delivery for Sydney’s signature cultural event when the first trucks arrived. Gill Minervini said: “Each year we are working to revitalize and give Vivid Sydney a new energy, made possible with the world’s best technology and innovation. We rely on the most experienced technical collaborators such as TDC to make Vivid Sydney a unique visual spectacular. We can’t wait to show everyone the results of all the hard work from our entire team working behind-the-scenes.”
“The Australian events industry in particular was hard hit by Covid and it’s great to see it start up again with new exciting technical achievements only to be seen at this year’s Vivid Sydney. We are now seeing a trend where technology is shaping the future of Festivals in using brighter, extreme-scale visuals, combined with mind-blowing content. This is pushing artists and content creators to think beyond the traditional canvas to communicate, imagine and share experiences,” said Michael Hassett, founder and managing director at TDC.
Technology preparation began in April at the TDC warehouse where projection equipment was checked and allocated for each location. The first on-site technical tests and projection line up started on 16 May 2022.
TDC Tech Tips
Vivid Sydney Firsts:
Understanding the manpower, knowledge and technology isn’t always easy so TDC has provided the most important facts and numbers:
- Biggest ever projector deployment – over 110 HD Projectors across 27 sites for 23-nights.
- 200 total hours of projection including testing and line up – equivalent to screening every movie that has ever won an Academy Award for Best Picture including Top Gun (1986).
- 30 crew work a year in advance starting with pre-production and planning. Over 1,000 design, administration and production hours and 3,858 technical delivery hours.
- Brighter than ever – over 2.5 million lumens of light is produced each evening.
- Australian owned and operated, TDC is hiring and training staff. TDC is an attractive proposition for up-and-coming young designers.
- Every Pixel is Everything to Us – Overall, 230,000,000 pixels is displayed each evening.
- Custom-built media servers are being used for the first time this year. These can achieve many looks and interactive elements with unique hidden features.
- All sites are remotely monitored with real-time “TDC Live View” remote reporting 24/7.
