Video and lights at the
Eurovision Song Contest 2002

Eurovision Song Contest 2002 in Tallinn, Estonia.

Photo: courtesy of Spectra+ AB.

Lighting TV Published: 27 June, 2002.
Estonian Television (ETV) was the host for the Eurovision Song Contest 2002, after Tanel Padar and Dave Benton won in front a full packed Parken arena in Copenhagen, Denmark the year before. The event, that is one of the biggest TV show in Europe with some 166 million viewers, did take place in newly build Saku Suurhall arena in Tallinn on the 25 May 2002.

For an TV show in this size, Estonian Television got help from their nabour Sweden. Swedish Television (SVT) was contracted to supply part of the TV production, including the director of the show, Marius Bratten. He also was the director for Eurovision Song Contest 2000 in the Globe Arena in Stockholm. The PA audio systems was provided by DM Sound in Sweden.

The swedish lighting company Spectra+ supplied the lighting and video equipment and a team of 26 people. Through Spectra+ did AVAB Scandinavia AB supplied the programing and control service including 6 AVAB Pronto! (3 main and 3 backup). Also did LANG Audiovision AG in Germany provided most of the High End Systems Catalyst systems. The show Lighting Designer Per Sundin designed special gobos called "ShaaRock" which were made by Beacon AB in Sweden.

Designing the contest

The Swedish LD Per Sundin got job of designing the lights for the Eurovision Song Contest 2002.

How did you get involved with the Eurovision Song Contest 2002?
My employer SVT Production was contracted as OB and production supplier for ESC 2002 in Tallinn , I was apart of that deal.

Can you tell about the design you made for the event?
The set designer Iir Hermelins idea was to make light and projection to a integrated part of the set design. (I was a member of the ETV jury who select the set design). She and her team designed a set were every millimeter was aimed for projection and I can tell "that is a challenge ......"
My main goal was to give every song a unique design and identity, add a second and third dimension (colours and depth) to the set. Creating the illusion of depth was difficult, especially in close-ups, were we often got just one set layer behind the singer which is a little bit tricky.
The materiel that the set was made of (fibreglass) are really fantastic , because it reflects the light incredably well and is still very good for back projection........a little bit magic. Together with Catalyst, video projectors, 220 moving lights, moving trusses, a packet of ACL bars and the most important, a fantastic crew, I got a very powerful tool to make my design ideas come true.

Did pre-programming and pre-visualization help you on a project on this size?
We did the pre-programming in WYSIWYG which helped us learn "get to know" the rig with more than 5000 channels. We pre-programmed around 80% of the songs. The difficulty was that we couldn't visualize the catalyst graphics in WYSIWYG and, as you know, the video graphics was a very big part of the show, so we had to guess many times how the Catalyst images should appear. We couldn´t ask for advice either, since no one in Europe had experience of a catalyst rig in the sizes that we used.

The set was based on the use of projections. How did you work with projectors?
I had an fantastic video and projector supplier in AV-Lang (Germany) and the Stockholm based video company ,Video Unlimited, who contributed with all "know how" that I could wish to have.

What is your thoughts now when the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 is over?
I think Catlyst and video graphics is the future of moving light. I really hope that other manufactures (including projector manufactures) will get into the light/video concept, because it is still very expensive and I think competition and developing of new products, especially video projectors, should bring down the price to a reasonable level, which would be great. I look forward to use this very powerful tool again.

The production of the contest

Ola Melzig from Spectra+ was Production Manager Lights for Eurovision Song Contest 2002 talks about the task of putting together this show.

Is this your first time you work with Eurovision Song Contest?
No, this is my second time. I was doing the exact same thing during Eurovision Song Contest 2000 at the Globe. In fact, we had the same technical coordinator, same soundcompany, same TV-Production team in Tallin as in the Globe which made things a much more easy.

Can you tell me about the organisation around Eurovision Song Contest 2002 - lighting wise?
We had a very solid organisation on the lightingside of the show. I was the production manager for lights and rigging, I had Tobias Åberg as my right hand and crewchief. I had Bullen Lagerbielke, Sören Durang and Emma Landare, the three best programmers money can buy, an excellent riggingteam with Oz Marsh and Lasse Jerdermark as headriggers, I had Peter Pihlblad and Tobias Åberg as Head of Dimmer, Tobias Österberg and Bebban Pihlblad as servicetechs, and Timo Kauristo and Emma Westerberg as head of DMX. Danne Persson was taking care of all trusses during build up and he was doing showfog during rehearsals and show. Ole Sparboom and Henrik Rydell was doing chainmastercontroll and Anita Grunwald and Sandra Skoglund was operating Followspot 1 & 2 and taking care of our local followspotoperators. I added the crew with 4 local lightingtechs, 7 local steelriggers and 6 local followspotoperators.
On the videoside I had Vello Herrmann and the rest of the crew from Video Unlimited who worked together with German Company AV-Lang who supplied us with the major part of Catalyst and projectors.

Describe the lighting rig that used for the event?
We had to put in a mothergrid at a lot of bumpertrusses into the arena to get all the equipment up there. The major truss was a 28 Diameter trussring in Prolyte s-52 inside that one, we had a half 21 diameter trussring as first frontruss. In the back we had 5 movingtrusses that where controlled with Chainmaster 250kg Variospeed motors and we had two more movingtrusses on Stage Right and Stage Left, controlled in the same way. We used 22 High End X-spot with the new flatfield reflector, 86 Martin Mac 600 and 82 Studio Due Live Pro 1200. In conventional we used 10x JTE 8-Lights, 33xJTE 2-lights and 20x ACL Pods. We had two RJ Aramis 2500kW HMI Followspots at F.O.H position, 2 RJ Corrigan 1200W HMI in a busstop in the middle of the arena and 4x RJ Foxie 700W MSR as truss-spots. We also used 36 High End Cyberlight Litho and 60x ACL bars to lit the audience. Everything was runned of three AVAB PRONTO! with 3 more units as back up. We used Ethernet between F.O.H and stage instead of DMX. To do showfog, we used 4x DF50 Cracked Oil Diffussion and 2x High End F100 all with Jem DMX fans. We had 1x Avo 72-way and 4x Okero 2486KK for dimmers

How did the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 go? What do you think about the end result?
I think it went very well.We did not have any unexpected problems what so ever and I'm very impressed by the way Estonian Television handled the production. Our mission was to help them delivre a good show and put their Estonia on the mapp, and I think we did it.......!