It’s quite funny. After last month’s bash toward the lack of innovation in our industry, I was approached by another trade show that can’t be mentioned by name. You know the drill, if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you, but the show starts with a P and ends with rolight & Sound and takes place in the city that gave a sausage its name, in the land of many Germans.
Anyway, the show is celebrating its 20-year anniversary this year and asked me to write a short piece about what I believed to be the most revolutionary product release in the past 20 years. I spent all of five seconds thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that it must be the introduction of the Catalyst media server.
Think about it for a second: What Richard Bleasdale, Peter Wynne Willson, and Tony Gottelier developed changed our way of creating shows and events forever—Bleasdale developing the software, and Wynne Willson and Gottelier working on the orbital head that was originally part of the design. A completely new set of tools was presented to the lighting designer, and the lighting industry picked up immediately on this.
The video industry was very sleepy and comfortable at the time, with few players and little action, strutting around in suits and ties, creating products for car shows and corporate events in ballrooms, and of course, very busy counting all the money they were making. All of a sudden, they had a whole flock of smelly long-haired hippies from the lighting industry chasing them about products that were smaller, brighter, lighter, more versatile, more creative, better, and cheaper. The video guys most have choked on their croissants!
I was in the in the middle of this trend when it happened, and it was very interesting to see the result up close, especially being one of the first users of all these new technologies and products popping up like magic mushrooms in a basement in Seattle.
The Catalyst was just as its name signifies: a catalyst to a huge change in the mindset of innovators and innovations following in its footsteps. This creation resulted in a massive variety of not only new products, but also new manufacturers pushing the limits and driving the innovation and development of this technology even further, completely changing the way we work.
When we did Eurovision in Estonia back in 2002, we spent all our money on 15 Catalysts, 14 of them with orbital heads mounted on Panasonic projectors. We realized quite early on that shit, that was a lot of control channels to master, but one thing we didn’t realize until quite late was that it’s pretty pointless to have all these media servers if you don’t have content. The stock content in a Catalyst back then was: 1. An American flag blowing in the wind. 2. A zoom-in sequence of a pier in Brighton. 3. A burning match filmed from above. Not very helpful!
By then, we were completely out of budget. Plus, it wasn’t like the market was flooded with digital content creators back then. I kid you not, all content used for that show—which turned out to be the very first show that ever used Catalyst—was made by the guy doing graphics for the sports at Estonian Television, in his kitchen at night, on overtime. His wife came to deliver a new hard drive every morning during our three weeks of live programming and rehearsals. It was hilarious!
Those were the days. Things have developed a bit since then. Thank God!
All of a sudden, you could not do a proper show without video, which meant that someone had to rebuild half of the arenas around the world and every freaking tour had to have at least 25 tons of LED screens.
But that’s another story.
So, recognize some of the most brilliant minds and give them the credit they deserve. Richard, Tony, Peter: thank you!
You changed our world forever!
Ola Melzig has 25 years’ experience working in the entertainment concert industry, working his way up from stagehand through all facets of production. Today his resume includes technical director on large-scale events worldwide, including the Eurovision Song Contest, the Commonwealth Games opening and closing ceremonies in New Delhi, India, Espectáculo Conmemorativo, the Cinco de Mayo 150 year anniversary show in Puebla, Mexico, and the 2014 IIFA Awards. He is currently working as senior technical manager for the closing ceremonies for the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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