BAKU, Azerbaijan — For the 57th annual Eurovision Song Contest, with semi-finals staged May 22 and 24 and the finals on May 26 at the 23,000-capacity Baku Crystal Hall, Cape Cross Studio + Filmlicht GmbH served as general technical service provider. Among the many companies contributing to the success of the event was Germany-based Sommer Cable.
Sommer Cable noted in a press release that the production required more than three kilometers of fiber optic cable and four kilometers of multi-channel AES/EBU + DMX cabling, and, with almost all of the gear arriving from Germany, the crew oversaw gear transport via 100 40-foot rail containers, 110 40-ton trucks and two Boeing 747 cargo planes.
LD Jerry Appelt specified an arsenal of 2,891 lighting fixtures, including more than 1,400 moving lights. To control those lights, eight consoles were put to use, with 14 NPUs (10 active and four spare units) plus 18 NSPs (14 active, four spares), in 11 locations around the hall. Each location included manageable switches, interconnected via single-mode fiber-optic lines.
As a connector system, the HI-Fiber4 series from German manufacturer HiCon was used in combination with flexible 4-fiber SC-Octopus Pur line from Sommer Cable. “The easy access and the full compatibility with the standardized LC connector was a crucial point for us to rely on the HiCon system,” said Christian Hanno, technical manager of the lighting crew
“The panel-mount socket is plug-symmetrical, both from front and rear, so the HI-Fiber4 cable plug or any combination of 4 LC connectors may be used alternatively as well,” Hanno added. He also noted that to wire up the 108 DMX universes used for the lighting system alone — not including video — the crew relied upon Sommer Cable’s flexible SC-Quantum multipair cable, which was also used for the production’s moving truss.
For more information, please visit www.sommercable.com.
