Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

WI involved in European Games’ ceremonies

WI involved in European Games’ ceremonies
WI involved in European Games’ ceremonies

Belgian based engineering specialist WIcreations was involved in making some key elements of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games. WIcreations was approached directly by California based production company FiveCurrents who produced the Ceremonies. WI’s team was led by Yves Vervloet and worked closely with FiveCurrents’ Senior Technical Director Nick Eltis.

 

The Heist Opt den Burg Heist-op-den-Berg based company was tasked with helping create some major visual moments, including the magic (flying) carpet during the Opening Ceremony, and design and construction of three performer stages for the Closing Ceremony, complete with a Temple of Fire rising up from beneath the largest one.

 

WI created a waving movement for the carpet as it sped through the air from the back of the stadium to the front of the Prodigal Stage where all the competing country flags were being flown. The movement was achieved by designing and building a 12 cm high aluminium frame fitted with 42 moving arms - 21 per side - on a crank-shaft system, powered via a battery controlled DC servo motor, which sat underneath the cloth carpet.

 

The 4 metre long by 2.5 metre wide carpet, complete with wave frame weighed under 200 kg and was picked up via four 4 mm steel wire cables and attached to a flying system engineered by TAIT. Underneath the top layer of carpet was a poly-stretch construction in the middle to provide the area on which the performer could safely sit.

 

For the Closing Ceremony, the WI team build three teardrop shaped performer stages, each covered in a video floor supplied by CT. The largest was 2 metres high and equipped with a specially designed lifting system which allowed the Temple of Fire - a scenic version of the castle-like religious temple in the Surakhani suburb of Baku - to rise up to 10 metres in the air, complete with performer on top during a section of the finale.

 

WI developed four telescopic lifting systems, one in each corner of the temple, connected to trusses and with a lifting cap of 8 metres and an inner height of 1.65 metres. The movement of the Spiralift motors raising the towers resembled grass growing in real-time. The lifting was controlled via a Kinesys Vector system, and the four temple towers were made from double-layered fabric designed by WI in collaboration with soft goods specialist Showtex. Each tower had remote controlled flames bursting out. The lifting system fit into the stage with 2 mm gaps to spare at the edges, enabling it to be completely concealed.

 

(Photos: Getty Images)

 

www.wicreations.com

© 1999 - 2024 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories