Project Type
Live For Broadcast A special awards show by Michael Schwandt, Inc., for the Malta Film Commission.
Project Name
Mediterrane Film Festival Awards. The event took place in Valletta, Malta, In June 2026.
Design Criteria
Create a film awards show in a unique setting. The Golden Bee Awards closed the fourth Mediterrane Film Festival on 28 June 2026 at the Malta Film Studios tanks in Kalkara, hosted by Jack Whitehall, with Leona Lewis, Joseph Calleja and Destiny among the performances.
Project Description
Rather than inside a traditional venue for these types of projects, we decided to build the entire stage and set on the very thing that brings so many production to Malta, the worlds largest water tank for filming. This meant creating a stage for the water and building an entire audience setup around the tank. In addition to creating an awards show, we had to create an Opening & Closing Ceremony along with seven performance acts in between awards cycles featuring headlining talent. The stage featured water fountains, a water projection screen, flame projectors, fireworks, aqua drone floating/drivable stages (only the second time the tech had been used), air drones, fireworks, a giant acrobatic rocking ship, an 8-ton crane to fly aerial performers in over the water/over the stage and set pieces/props from the Gladiator 1 & 2 films, all to accompany both performance and the awards ceremony itself.
Challenges and Solutions
An Atlantis-style ceremony on the tanks: a water-screen projection, fountains, a floating pianist, drones, acrobats and fireworks. The hard part was not any one effect. It was running an awards show and nine performances as one system, on a film tank, in about six weeks.
Malta Film Studios’ surface tank is a film set, not a theatre. It is built to be flooded, filmed and drained, with a Mediterranean backdrop and no house grid, no fixed power, no audience rake and no backstage. The stage had to be engineered dry, then the tank filled with seawater around and under it. That reverses a normal load-in: foundations, cable paths, fountain risers, submerged stages and the water screen all had to be finished and tested before the water came up, because almost nothing structural could be adjusted once it was wet.
Seawater is the second problem. It is conductive, corrosive and not optically clean. Every submerged cable, connector, fountain pump and aqua-drone hull had to be marine-rated, and every lighting and video look had to be programmed against water that moves, reflects and goes milky under wind. A 40 m water screen only holds an image if the sheet is laminar. Wind off the harbor breaks that sheet, and there is no roof to stop it and we dealt with this on several occasions, unsure if this was going to work.
The audience was built up and around the tank rather than in front of a stage. Sightlines were 270 degrees, so there was no “offstage.” Presenters, winners and a 20-dancer/16-acrobat company had to enter from passerelles and runways that were themselves over water. An 80m stage of three runways, two passerelles, a main stage and two submerged platforms is a long walk for a winner in a gown and a long reset for a company that cannot simply step into a wing.
Sixty-four fountains — 34 at 20m and 20 at 10m — plus a water screen, flame projectors and fireworks is a sequencing problem, not a decoration problem. Fountains throw spray into the wind. Flame projectors and fireworks need dry exclusion zones and a clear air path. The water screen needs still air and a dark background. Those three cannot peak at once, so the show had to be written as alternating states: water picture, then flame and pyro, then water again. Leona Lewis’s number, with her face thrown on the fountain sheet, only works in the water state.
The aerial system made the exclusion zones worse. An 8-ton crane 75m from center, flying performers in over water and over the stage, has a swing radius that crosses the audience, the runways and the fountain field. A 1-ton human chandelier is a second flying load. Both need a clear vertical and a abort path that ends over water, not over seats. The acrobatic rocking ship and the 10m floating piano are unfixed mass on water: they drift, they change trim when an acrobat lands, and they cannot be spiked the way a deck mark can. With less than a week on the wet stage, those pieces got one real integration, not a tech week.
The aqua drones were the least proven layer. Used only once before, two performer platforms and one lighting platform had to be driven on seawater, hold position in wind, and hit marks next to fountains and a submerged stage. They do not brake like a wagon. A 1,000-drone air show over the same volume had to be deconflicted from the crane, the fireworks and the harbor approach. That is an airspace and a marine-traffic problem as much as a creative one.
Gladiator props added a film-asset constraint the awards show does not usually carry. Pieces from the films are loaned, heavy, and not built as touring scenic. They had to read on an 80m water stage and survive spray, then go back undamaged.
Four headliners (Lewis, Calleja, Destiny, and the floating piano as its own act) each needed a different acoustic and a different relationship to the water. Opera and a water screen fight each other: the screen wants playback-locked picture, the voice wants a live mix in open air with wind and fountain noise. Foldback over water is uneven. That mix had to be rebuilt per act, not once for the night.
Three weeks of build, one week offsite, under a week on the water is the constraint that makes the rest bite. Offsite rehearsal can set choreography for 20 dancers and 16 acrobats. It cannot set crane timing, drone drift, fountain wind, seawater electrics or a water screen. Those only exist after the tank is filled, which is after the build. So the show was effectively teched inside the dress window, with flame, pyro, drones and a 75m crane all waiting on the same marine and aviation clearances.
What held it together was treating Florian Wieder’s stage as the show architecture rather than a backdrop: the runways carried both the ceremony and the acts, the water screen and fountains carried the scene changes a wing could not, and the crane, ship and aqua drones were written as set pieces with their own cues instead of as scenery that could be reset between awards.
All of this was executed with only four days of actual rehearsal on stage, detailed previz from all departments (fountains, aqua drones, fireworks, air drones, intense around the clock programming sessions for the full week leading up to the show. We were creating a Cirque du Soleil or Dragone-style show meets concert with massive ceremony style elements. This typically take months, if not a year, to develop and we did it in six weeks.
Features
64 Fountains (34 20m high & 20 10m high)
40m Water Projection Screen
80m Stage comprised 3 runways, 2 passerelles & 1 MainStage)
2 Submerged Water Stages
1,000 Air Drones (floating drivable stages)
3 Aqua Drones (2 for performers & 1 for lighting)
8-ton Crane for Aerialists (75 meters away from centerstage)
1-ton Human Chandelier Truss
Acrobatic Rocking Boat
Floating Piano (10m high)
20 Dancers
16 Acrobats
2 Fire Artists
3 Headlining Artists
Set Pieces & Props from Gladiator 1 & 2 Films
9 Performances
3 Special Guest Presenters
12 Awards + 2 Lifetime Achievement Awards
Team
Show Director & Creative Director - Michael Schwandt (Michael Schwandt, Inc.)
Executive Producer/Production Designer/Set Designer - Florian Wieder (Lodge of Levity/Wieder Design)
Executive Producer - Jens Bujar (Lodge of Levity)
Executive Producer - Anton Attard (Greatt Inc)
Executive Producer - Johann Grech (Malta Film Studios)
Lighting Designer - Raphaël Demonthy (Sunrise)
Lighting Programmer - Marcel Knauf (Sunrise)
Video Content - Falk Rosenthal & Thomas Neese (Gravity)
Water FX (fountains, water screen, aqua drones & flame projectors) - Crystal
Air Drones - Drone Power
Fireworks - Busu Jas
Art Director - IsabelRauert
Asst Show Director - Jill Hillier
Creative Producer - Marco Da Silva
Producer - Kevin Higginson
Choreographer - Ferly Prado
Acrobatic Choreographer - Johanna Sapakie
Asst Choreographer - Taylor Thomas
Asst Acrobatic Choreographer - Alan Medina
Costume Designer - Zizi Bohrer-Lehnar
Music Director - EltonZarb
Kristian Kristof - Crane Performance Designer
Pavel Kotov - Acrobatic Casting