ELP take Slow Boat to China with custom built truss for the Olympic Games
Steve Goody, the BBC’s engineering manager responsible for the Games came back from the Beijing recce having seen the vast media complex building which was an amazing pagoda shaped structure.
Steve brought back technical drawings and built a scale model of a uniquely styled circular studio space.
The curvy space was going to cause some obvious technical installation challenges and so he commissioned ELP to create a custom built structure and lighting grid for the BBC studio. ELP designed and fabricated bespoke shaped Quadralite truss back in May and sent it via ship to China to arrive in time for the August Games.
ELP Production manager Tony Slee comments “Customising the truss was a technical challenge and there was no room for error. Every piece had to fit perfectly and precisely. Our main concern was the ‘slow boat to China’. It was difficult to predict the transfer time of all our gear so we had to make sure there was a lot of contingency time just in case things got held up.”
ELP shipped a significant quantity of studio lighting including lots of LEDs to support a heavy “LED studio look”.
LD Carol Sadler requested a mixture of generic lighting (including MSRs ranging from 200W up to 2.5K, Arri 1k fresnels, plus a selection of tungsten fresnels) and LED fixtures including pixel pars and pixel lines, chromafloods and chromastrips. These were all controlled by an ELP Compulite console.
Outside the studio space, ELP was also asked to provide 9 x Portable Single Camera Kits (PSC's) for use around the Stadium. Each kit included 300w and 600w fresnels plus a Sachtler Battery kit and reflector.
Additionally, ELP set up some lighting for the Athletes Village and in other nearby locations for BBC News reports including Arri 650w fresnels and Dedo kits.