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Urström at the 1999 Stockholm Water Festival

SHOW DIARY

Day 5 - Saturday August 7 - Show day 2

    The crew gathered at 10:30 to begin working on the show. The artistic group went off to a quiet corner on one of the floating restaurants for a production meeting. Arvid went along to take notes on what adjustments would have to be made.

The artistic group in a meeting - one of the "hydro cycles" is visible in the background.

    The tech crew, under Adela's leadership set about their tasks. It was determined that the time code cable (provided by the local production company) to the Pani projectors was defective so it was replaced by a cable from Obscura Magica. Once this was done, testing found that the signal level was too low so frantic phone calls to the sound company got us a line booster amp. Working at the beam projection site was almost impossible as the power had been cut off due to a large crane being placed in front of the Opera house to re-rig the laser projection screen so that sponsor advertising would be displayed when the screen was stowed in the daytime.
    Adela spent some time with Jourgen Kleine and Herrick going over the details of the equipment as that have to head back to Germany tomorrow.

    The smoke machines were re-located and re-wired to take changing wind conditions into effect. We wanted to mount two of them under the bridge so as to take advantage of the prevailing winds. One location was a large floating platform moored under the bridge but we were told that this was reserved for the press and we could not mount equipment there. Another boat trip under the bridge found a spot where the steel supports for the streetlights could hold a small platform. The local production company was contacted and promised to provide a platform forthwith. We also requested a second power drop under the bridge so that we could power up another boat mounted smoke machine if needed.

Members of the water-ski team relax and catch a few rays between shows.

    Jan returned to master control and was soon hard at work adding more beam effects into the show. Örjan brought his portable computer and MIDI equipment to the site to make minor changes in the levels and instruments for the musical score.
    Once again at 23:00 the expectant hush fell over the darkened site and the show began. This evening's performance when much more smoothly despite a breaker blowing on the Pani projectors which caused a couple of missed cues at the beginning of the facade projections.
    I witnessed a new phenomenon, the wind blew in 3 different directions at the same time! Smoke from the fire tower location was whipped over the audience and disappeared from the site. The smoke from the machine at the west end of the site (Parliament buildings) went west, while the smoke from the restaurant barge mounted location went NE under the bridge.

    The audience seemed to enjoy the show much more with cheers and lots of people attempting to take flash pictures of the laser projections and the images projected onto the Royal Palace. While the show was much improved, the post-mortem meeting again decided on some changes that would be required the next day.

Quick Links to Report Pages

Stockholm Water Festival Report - Introduction
Sweden and Stockholm - Background and general information
The Site - Orientation to the show area and the challenges it presented
The Crew - The people who put it all together
Tech Specs - The equipment used in the presentation
The Music - An interview with the composer and MP3 file of the soundtrack
Smoke on the water - Covering a lake with smoke for beam effects
The Show - A description with many pictures
Animated Gifs - Gifs showing Palace projections and climatic beam effects
Stadshuset - Stockholm City Hall tour (very large page)
Show Diary - Day-to-day coverage of the trials and triumphs

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