After the drama and excitement of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, Durham Marenghi, lighting designer for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil looks back at the highlights and challenges during the design process and the industry itself. He has also worked on previous Olympic ceremonies in Turin, Beijing and Sochi. Live Design caught up with Marenghi while he reflected on his experience in Rio.
Katinka Allender: Describe the lighting design process (from concept to completion) for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Rio 2016.
Durham Marenghi: After deciding that the Opening Ceremony was to be delicate and theatrical and the Closing Ceremony was all about partying Brazilian style, we were hired as the lighting designers in October 2015, leaving only 10 months before the games were due to start.
The creative team wanted a lot of projection, rather than the “big beam” event lighting that typically the Opening Ceremonies are associated with. We designed the whole system in wysiwyg, and then handed the drawings over to production for the bid process. The companies then came in to bid for it, and we had to value engineer the rig to fit into a comparatively small budget; we only had a third of what we normally spend on these ceremonies.
We released the drawings and worked out which desks would control what fixtures, then we moved onto the programming session. There was an interesting symbiosis with lighting and projection, not only in the show but also technically.
Logistically, we had to negotiate who would work when because, obviously, when the sun came up, not everyone could work. It was a very close combination of skills in terms of the design and also using nighttime to its best advantage. wysiwyg played a massive part in us being able to continue to work either in daylight or when elements of the system weren’t up and running. There was a point about the cost of diesel for generators, which sometimes imposed limits on running the lighting rig so wysiwyg stepped in whenever we didn’t have control of the real fixtures.
KA: Which scenes stood out for you?
DM: For both ceremonies, it was the Olympic cauldron. Usually when the cauldron is lit, it emits a lot of light inside the stadium. Rio was a very ‘green’ and efficient event so we had a very small flame in the cauldron which didn’t burn up anywhere near as much gas as we normally do.
This gave me the opportunity to magnify the mirror effect on the sculpture behind the cauldron by having visible pin spot beams moving around the stadium. We could make them very theatrical and also save energy!
KA: What were the challenges?
DM: One challenge was the Box City set at the end of the stadium. A lot of performers were doing rehearsals, and it was a very dangerous place to be because each box was up to 20 meters high. For the first week of the rehearsals, I kept the area in working light for safety, then we slowly ‘weaned’ the performers onto our real production lighting.
We were lighting the stadium not only for television but also for the live audience. The lighting levels we were reaching were around 200 Lux where normally we’d be up at 600 or 800 Lux, so the live Olympic stadium actually looked quite under lit. In order to keep the contrast ratios required for good broadcast pictures, the live event doesn’t look as bright as one might expect it to. We constantly asked the theatrical creatives not to look at the stage, but to close the curtains and look at the monitors because that’s what 3 billion people were going to see, not the 75,000 in the stadium. That decision has to be made at the beginning of the process.
One of the hardest challenges you have then is to negotiate with the International Olympic Committee and Olympic Broadcasting Services who expect to see a certain level of brightness on the important protocol elements: the flags, the athletes’ parade, etcetera. We had to demonstrate that to those viewing on TV, it would look perfectly fine even though the stadium itself might look a little dim compared to what the VIPS might normally expect from a live show.
Because the venue was a football stadium for the soccer finals, as soon as the Opening Ceremony was finished, there was a big changeover to get all our set out in six days. Then, they turfed it, and it became the soccer finals stadium until the day before the Closing Ceremony. We had no set, no performers, no stage, and no dress rehearsal, so that was an exercise in intuitive pre-programming with wysiwyg. We also got choreographic charts made up for mass cast formations of Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf Mountain, and all those sequences we saw in the show with performers upon projection. We projected the charts onto four big panels of parachute silk, which we dragged out onto the pitch every night, and we created a projection on the sheets. That was a challenge. We got away with it, and it worked well, thank god!
The most important thing for me spiritually and lighting-wise is the Olympics athletes’ parade and, of course, we never get to see the athletes until the actual show night. During programming, I remember we lit the whole sequence with just two people walking the field rather than the 2,500-3,000 athletes that we had on show day, so that’s quite a challenge. Each of our systems had wysiwyg running and attached to it so the programmers could work independently, and also sometimes in these stadiums, you cannot see the whole system from the control room anyway. It’s good to know what you’re doing by having it mirrored in wisiwyg.
KA: What fixtures did you use, and how did they work with the planning?
DM: I wanted to do the cauldron justice with all the pin spots. I made sure that every fixture in the main rig was able to go down to a very sharp beam of light. We needed to combine great optics with high output, factor in that we weren’t allowed to hang much on the roof so it had to be lightweight, and then factor in the cost of diesel—especially for overnight programming—so it had to have low power consumption. So I went for the Clay Paky range with Sharpy washes, Mythos, and the Alpha Profile 1500 and Beam 1500. We also had weather-proof SGM for architectural lighting as well as Robert Juliat followspots, all supplied by Agora.
It’s great to have support from CAST for planning and programming. They supported us with a dongle or two and were always in close collaboration. If I need a fixture that doesn’t exist in the library, then they will make one for me. We have a fantastic relationship with them, and we try and pass them as much information, such as fly-throughs and demonstrations about what we’re doing when we are politically allowed to do so; in this case, it’s after the event.
KA: How is the lighting market in Brazil different from Asia, Europe, and the US?
DM: It’s very expensive to import things because of import duties. But I liked working with the local people and suppliers. I took on a Brazilian associate lighting designer named Joyce Drummond, and I also insisted that one of the programmers we used was also Brazilian: Paulinho Lebrão. I wanted to leave a legacy of skills and experience that isn’t normally left when the Olympic circus moves out of town.
KA: What’s next for you?
DM: Abu Dhabi National Day on December 2. It’s a big staging show. In terms of size, it’s very similar to the Olympics Opening Ceremony, except instead of the athletes’ parade, we’ve got a parade of tanks!
As for the Olympics, we carefully design lighting and projection for the artistic sequences but at the end of the day, the parade is what everyone is fundamentally there for so that has to be perfectly lit. Off with the projection!
Lighting Production Credits for 2016 Rio Olympics
Lighting Designer: Durham Marenghi
Lighting Team Manager: Jennie Marenghi
Associate Lighting Designer: Joyce Drummond
TV Lighting Director: Nick Collier
Lead Lighting Programmer: Andy Voller
Lighting Programmer: Ross Williams
Lighting Programmer: Paulinho Lebrão
Followspot Captain: Chris Henry