Robe’s philosophy of smaller-brighter-lighter reaches new levels at Miniatur Wunderland where BMFL Spots, Pointes and LEDWash 600s are prominent on the lighting rig for German music superstar Helene Fischer’s show-stopping performance at the Berlin Olympiastadion!
If this sentence does not quite make sense … then please read on!
The actual concerts were staged in July 2015 during Fischer’s “Farbenspiel” tour and were enjoyed by around 110,000 people. Anyone who missed the show … can catch the experience at the Miniatur Wunderland attraction in Hamburg where a 1:87 scale model of the complete venue, stage, functioning lighting, sound and video production plus capacity for a full audience – has been constructed!
This includes a quantity of 1:87 scale Robe fixtures which have been replicated in painstaking detail by Sven Hinzmann and the Miniatur Wunderland technical teams which included around 40 engineers, planners and creatives.
More than just another exhibit at the attraction, the whole concept – originally the brain-child of Miniatur Wunderland founder Frederik Braun– has the additional resonance of being a fundraiser for the “Ein Herz für Kinder” (A Heart for Children) charity.
A total of 57,000 seats on the model can be booked via www.farbenspiel-wunderland.de – all the money is being donated to Ein Herz für Kinder. The Wunderland crew receive a printout each morning of the seats sold during the previous day, and then physically populate the stadium with a stock of 57,000 individual little figures!
Visitors to Miniatur Wunderland can also purchase seats and place their own figure in the stadium.
Sven is responsible for audio visual effects in and around the Wunderland exhibition and assumed the role of translating between the worlds of the real stage and production … and the model. A master of lighting and an experienced LD, he also took on responsibility for lighting the model himself.
He received a lighting plot from technical production co-ordinator for the real tour, Soundhouse, which included the Robe fixtures, and set about replicating them with the help of 3D CAD drawings and schematics from Robe.
The BMFL Spots and also some ColorWash 2500E ATs on the model are fitted with RGB LED pixels so light shines out of them – although they don’t actually move. A lightshow complete with video content scaled to fit the model screens all plays out to a rendition of Fischer’s hit, "Atemlos" that blasts through the scaled PA.
Lighting for the real tour was a co-design by Andreas Kisters (Andy) and Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Basset Design (WBD). The itinerary featured 30 indoor arena shows starting in Autumn 2014, which completely sold out, as were the 15 stadium dates in summer 2015 including the two nights in Berlin.
With nearly a million tickets sold, it was one of the largest German productions of the last 10 years.
Andy has had “Very good” experiences working with Robe in the past and specified ColorWash 2500E ATs and Pointes for the indoor shows. When it came to the stadiums, they retained the basic design, added some extra lights and swapped some of the ColorSpot 2500E ATs for BMFL Spots because of their intense brightness which makes them ideal for stadium use.
Twenty-one BMFL Spots, 35 x ColorWash 2500E ATs, 33 x Pointes and 20 x LEDWash 600s were in the air above stage, joined by another 6 x BMFL Spots, 6 x ColorWash 2500E ATs and 14 x Pointes on the floor, supplied to the production by leading German rental company, Satis&Fy.
All lighting was programmed onto a Hog 4 console operated on the road by Andy to great effect.
“Robe was my first choice of luminaire for the tour” he explained, “and we had no problems at all for the whole time with the kit. I really like working with Robe”.
At Miniatur Wunderland the lighting cues were programmed by Sven via an MA4port Node and an MA VPU for the video, utilising around 500 DMX channels for the stage set up and another 650 for the stadium ‘environmental’ lighting.
They had just 8 weeks to complete the build – including planning and construction - which was tight! It was the first time that they had built a whole stadium, but they had completed a stage before for Swiss DJ and music producer DJ Bobo, so drew on their experience with this project.
Working alongside Sven was project manager and co-ordinator Christian Schuh, assisted by Tobias Haase and the modelling department. Kenneth Mandel headed the planning and electrical installation team, and as head of lighting and programming, Sven was assisted by Tim Schweer. The mechanical planning and installation – for the moving figures onstage – was completed by Damian Sikora and Henrik Schroder.
A highlight for Sven was making the Robe moving lights with the LEDs and also replicating lots of blinders which added some serious rock ‘n’ roll vibes to the model!
The impressive target … is to raise over 500,000 Euros for Ein Herz für Kinder.
Photos: Ingo Dombrowski