The Invictus Games Orlando 2016, which took place May 8-12 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, celebrated the camaraderie of competitors. Created by Prince Harry in 2014 to honor wounded service men and women, the Invictus Games deepen the respect for wounded military personnel. With 55 hours of ceremonies and games televised across ABC and ESPN, the events drew a viewing audience that went beyond the 56,000 live spectators to reach more than 10 million viewers worldwide.
With the Invictus Games taking place over a five-day span, there were only three days between the Opening Ceremony on day one (May 8) and the Closing Ceremony on day five (May 12). Along with all the planning for the separate opening and closing ceremonies, the challenge of dealing with the changeover within that three-day window influenced the design process from the beginning, states Carlos Navarrete-Patiño of CN Production Design. “Talking about the Opening Ceremony design meant you had to also talk about the Closing Ceremonies. We had to work backwards in designing and planning to ensure the changeover could be done.”
The design solution came in the form of an 84-by-64-by-55-foot cube (WxDxH), which worked as both a scenic element and storage unit. The structure was built with scaffolding and covered in blow-through fabric to create a projection surface. “We called it the ‘Magic Cube.’ It worked as a projection surface and entrance element for the Opening ceremony, but it also had all the gear for the Closing ceremony inside it,” explains Navarrete-Patiño. “We opened the cube for Closing and unpacked what was inside. That is why we started designing with Closing in mind, to make sure we put all of those assets inside. The cube idea brought us to the look of the Opening,” he adds. “That gave us a wonderful imposing backdrop to project on, created a space for the choir finale, and was a very heroic entrance gate for the competitors to parade into the stadium. We knew we wanted to create a fantastic entrance for the competitors.”
Production Teamwork
The seamless, cohesive integration of all the production elements supported the Invictus Games 2016 Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Navarrete-Patiño, who served as the events’ production designer, worked on behalf of producers ContinuumLIVE and Donaldson Creative, with Christopher Laue and Sara Donaldson jointly performing the roles of executive producer and creative director.
The design team also included video designers/content creators Yves Aucoin and Randy Gonzalez of 4U2C, LD David Grill of David Grill Associates and sound designer Patrick Baltzell of Baltzell Audio Design. Solotech backed their collective vision for two moving and celebratory events with the requisite lighting, audio, video and rigging equipment packages and crew. Brown United, SGA Production Services, and PNH Solutions also provided staging and scenic elements for the Opening and Closing ceremonies.
Navarrete-Patiño, who has worked with Grill, Aucoin, and Gonzalez on several previous projects, knew that, as a team, they would be on the same creative page. “This is one of those things that you can’t do by yourself,” he says. “David, Yves, and Randy are such great collaborators. I didn’t design the stages on my own, just like they didn’t design the lighting or projection on their own; we did it all together, and that’s what’s great — that’s why I think we work so well together.”
A Revealing Moment
Perhaps no moment highlights that creative collaboration more than the choir revealed inside the cube during the finale of the Opening Ceremony. The material covering the scaffolding cube, a fencing fabric called Techno, has a 70 percent blow-through capacity. Along with its ability to prevent the cube taking flight in a high wind, it has the benefit of being able to act as a scrim. This scrim effect for the chorale performance became a much talked-about moment among many of the viewers and spectators.
“A lot of people thought that was all done through projection,” Navarrete-Patiño notes. “But the choir was all live, standing up in the scaffold structure. Basically, it’s old-school; exactly the same thing as theatre designers using a scrim and lighting to opaque or reveal what’s behind it. This was just a much-bigger scale. We literally went back to the basics. Right now in the world — projectors, LED panels, fantastic robotic lights — are all great, but at the end of the day, a good clean show has small elements with a dab of technology and well-crafted content that speaks to the audience.”
The choir inside the cube was particularly rewarding to Grill as well. To achieve this effect and find the right lighting and video solutions, the team mocked up a scale trial at the Solotech shop in Montreal. “We tested an enormous number of different combinations,” Grill describes. “But it was the good old MR16 striplight with some color correction that did it. The projections were at about 5,000K, and we were keying at about 4,200K to 4,400K. We corrected up the striplights so they wouldn’t look too warm. It worked out really well. It was nice that, in this technological world, we tried these myriad of LED products, all these little gizmos and gadgets, and at the end of the day, I asked, ‘Do you have any striplights?’ Sometimes the old-school answers are actually just fine; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It was an amazing moment in the show.”
The team members from 4U2C agree. “The result at the end was great,” states Gonzalez. “This is from the good collaboration we had with David. Together we did a lot of research and development and made this setup in Montreal to recreate the screen so we could play with video and light. We played with masks in the projection to reveal the performance.” Aucoin adds, “I thought it was really fun to watch, and because they were putting some projection over David’s lights, it kind of created a little bit more depth. It was very nice.”
The collaboration and the cause made the project special for 4U2C. “On this particular project, the communication was great,” Gonzalez says. “The collaboration between all of us in the background is so important, and it was key that it started with Carlos. Every time we sent a preview, we would see the feedback immediately — he shared all the content for and with all the departments so we could work together before integration in Orlando.”
Aucoin agrees. “It was real teamwork, and everybody knew that it was for a good cause. We were working for people who gave so much that it gave us a boost to do more for them. We were there to support their stories and to enhance that emotional connection, without over-staging it. I think the team succeeded well under the direction of Chris and Sara to bring that to everyone in the stadium and to transform that to television.”
Lighting for the Camera
Grill, no stranger to large outdoor televised projects, knows a lot about dealing with setting suns; tight schedules; and unpredictable weather, not to mention difficult lighting locations. “It starts with the usual challenge, life is not perfect,” comments Grill. “I honestly think you can design to a budget, you can design to an ideal, but to design to reality — in a lot of instances — is something that’s very difficult. You have to be able to design to time. When there is no tomorrow left in the schedule, tomorrow is now and now is the show, that forces you to make some hard but hopefully good decisions about what you would like to do versus what you can actually do.”
For his plot, Grill selected gear that could multi-task and be cued easily. “I think the workhorses of lighting, as are usually the case for me on outside shows, were the [Philips Vari-Lite] VL3500 Washes and then a pile of VL4K spots. The 4K spots were predominantly hung on the FOH positions, because of the throw distances, the shutters become critical so you can at crop it and strip it to do front light and light scenery. Then it’s just a matter of layering them on top of each other. I did use some [Clay Paky] Sharpy Washes on the two towers. I was worried a little bit about level and I could do a little bit of beamage with them. They were also very useful when I wanted to do a wash of backlight onto the opening ceremony stage. I could strip six of them down to beam mode, and at 250-feet it actually was quite an interesting picture. If we wanted to just fill on the competitors, I put them back in non-beam mode as a wash light.”
Grill also had a large number of Clay Paky Mythos fixtures, noting their ability to “be a beam or a gobo fixture was kind of nice. The animation wheel in them gives you some really nice movement in the background, too. I was worried we didn’t have that much time to cue so a unit that does color mixing is a hell of a lot quicker to cue than something that doesn’t color mix. It worked out real well for us.”
For the Closing Ceremony, Grill used Ayrton MagicPanel-Rs, crediting “what they could do in terms of their internal macro effects. It was all about selecting things that you could cue quickly and efficiently without having to build a 400-step chase with bitmapping. Up on the balcony rails, I had [Chroma-Q] Color Block 2’s. Those units are tested tough from the Super Bowl Halftime Shows. They are easy to cable because of the way the power supplies work, easy to mount to the rail, hide the power supplies, etc. Plus, they do pretty well in the pouring rain!”
Noting the challenges imposed by the weather and the schedule, Grill appreciated the support from Solotech. “I enjoy working with those guys, and they went out of their way to provide what we needed for what we were trying to accomplish.” Solotech’s project manager, Eric Gauthier, who worked closely on the logistics schedule with continuumLive and the other vendors, comments, “Since Solotech provided all of the equipment, it was easier for me as project manager to adjust all the departments at the same time and with the same goals. When you get to work with this level of designers, everything is on another level, and we have to deliver what they planned; they trusted us to do that. We are proud being able to deliver on that trust.”
Changing Light Levels
Maintaining proper lighting levels and a good looking broadcast image, regardless of Mother Nature, is helped immensely by working with a great team. “Dealing with lighting levels was a moving target because of time of day with the sun setting” Grill says. “We actually lucked out — at the beginning of the opening ceremony at 8 p.m., we were probably around 150 footcandles, and by the time we ended, we were in the 50-ish range. That gave us a change of 100 footcandles, whereas if we had started at 7:30, we probably would have started at 250 footcandles and dropped to 50 footcandles, which can be ridiculous to work. Then, projections are pumping full volume at the start, trying to keep the content as bright as possible, until there’s that moment where it reverses, and it’s ‘Oh my God, here we go’ and everybody starts adjusting,” laughs Grill. “That’s the great thing about having a really good video team; Carlos and Randy were just awesome. We learned long ago that video needs to be in the same control room as lighting; we’re all looking at the exact same thing.”
Grill appreciates the video engineers from ESPN, commenting, “I have to say that the sports video guys are a great, great breed and don’t get enough credit. They have a really deep understanding of the sun, the stadium lights, and how to balance all that. Plus, Lorenzo [Lamadrid], the director, is the nicest guy in the world and vested 400 percent. That truly was one of the best things on this show — the collaboration between lighting, video, and direction. This project is special because the stories you are telling are so powerful. You’re driven by the meaning behind why you’re doing this show. You watch people that were brutalized by war and you realize how fortunate we are to be free. They are there for each other, pushing each other over the finish line, and you never hear them make an excuse. It is a humbling lesson to learn.”
Navarrete-Patiño sums up the experience, “We all understood what Prince Harry, Sara Donaldson, and Chris Laue wanted to do here. To contribute to that effort was important to all of us on the creative team. This was giving back to all of these men and women who have put their lives in danger, their families’ lives on hold, so every one of us can live the way we live. These ceremonies honor them.”
Invictus Games 2016
Crew
- Producers: ContinuumLIVE and Donaldson Creative
- Executive Producers and Creative Directors: Christopher Laue, Sara Donaldson
- Production Designer: Carlos Navarrete-Patiño, CN Production Design
- LD: David Grill, David Grill Associates, Inc.
- Projection and Video Design: Yves Aucoin and Randy Gonzalez, 4U2C
- Sound Designer: Patrick Baltzell, Baltzell Audio Design
- Art Director: Adrian Barrios
- CAD Manager: Hector Gaitan
- Lighting Directors: Paul Sonnleitner, Lynda Erbs
- Gaffer: Mathieu Lavallee
- Lighting/Video/Rigging/Audio: Solotech
- Solotech Rep: Richard LaChance (Senior Vice President, International Business Development
- Solotech Project Manager: Eric “Gautsss” Gauthier
- Lighting Crew: Mathieu “El gros” Lavallee, project manager; Mathieu “Golden Bear” Lemelin, lighting network tech; Jean-Francois “Titi” Malette, Alexandre “Tempete” Levesque, Gabriel “Mom” Foucault, Andy “The Happy Irish” O’Tool, lighting techs
- Video Crew: Pascal Rhainds, Project Manager; Phillipe “Filou” Chiasson, LED tech; Frederic Fournier, Pascale Boileau, Nicolas Gagnon, video techs
- Rigger: John “Snappy” Sabourin
- 4U2C Projection and Video Design
- Artistic Director: Randy Gonzalez
- Creative Director: Yves Aucoin
- Executive Producer: Stéphane Mongeau
- Project Manager: Shelley Dupasquier
- Video Technical Director and System Designer: Francis Corbeil
- Video Programmer: Pierre-Luc Brunet
- Motion Designers: Maxime Lortie, Sébastien Tilly, Maxim Boisseau
- 3D Artists: Igor Correia, Mathieu Martin
- Illustrator/Graphic Designer: Linh Phuong Tran
- Intern: Tanja Schubert
- Staging/Scaffolding: Brown United
- Staging/Risers: SGA Production Services
- Signage and Graphics: PNH Solutions
- Solotech Audio Crew: David “Dbraz” Brazeau, project manager; Alexandre Bibeau, PA system tech; Jason Bjger, PA assistant; Renato Petruzziello, monitor engineer; Russ Wilson, patch master; Charles “Chuck” Deziel, RF; Mathieu “Ray” Levesque, comms
Gear
Lighting/Rigging
- 46 Philips Vari-Lite VL4000 Spots
- 70 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash
- 20 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash FX
- 20 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 SPOT
- 26 Philips Vari-Lite VLX
- 24 Ayrton MagicPanel-R fixtures
- 16 Clay Paky B-Eyes
- 54 Clay Paky Sharpy Washes
- 42 Clay Paky Mythos
- 16 Robe Cyc FX8s
- 200 Elation PAR ELAR 180s
- 70 Chroma-Q ColorBlock 2s
- 40 Altman Zipstrip3 MR-16s
- 40 ETC Source Four PARs
- 6 Robert Juliat Cyrano 2.5kW followspots
- 3 Robert Juliat Korrigan 1.2kW followspots
- 4 MDG The One hazers
- 62 CM Motor 1 ton hoists
- 72 Box truss (20.5’’ x 20.5’’)
Video
- 12 Barco HDF-W30 (4 stacks of 3)
- 8 Barco HDX-W20 (2 stacks of 4)
- 10 Watchout Displays (4 outputs each)
- 2 Watchout Producer units
- 1 Lightware 33×33 Matrix (MX-FR33R)
- 500 Theatrixx XVision 10mm LED Panels
Audio
- 1 DiGiCo SD-7 FOH Console
- 1 DiGiCo SD-7 Monitor Console
- 22 Channels Shure UHF-R series
- 16 Channels Shure PSM-1000
- 24 L-Acoustics K1
- 24 L-Acoustics K2
- 16 L-Acoustics SB28
- 8 L-Acoustics X8
- 16 L-Acoustics X15
