History was made. For the first time ever, the Special Olympics World Games took place in Berlin, Germany from June 17 to 25, 2023. The opening show ceremony of the games was thereby designed by none other than the team around Flo Erdmann, who relied on Syncronorm's multimedia show design software Depence R3 to create and visualize this fabulous show. With over 7000 athletes in 26 different sports, this major sporting event focuses on the mentally and multiply handicapped to give them visibility and promote inclusion. The massive opening ceremony also served to strengthen public perception and create a media focus for these very important topics.
The collective phase7 performing.arts under the artistic direction of Sven Sören Beyer was responsible for the creative concept of the opening ceremony as well as its planning and implementation in cooperation with mediapool Veranstaltungsgesellschaft on behalf of the Local Organization Committee Berlin. POOL Group GmbH was responsible for the technical implementation. Flo Erdmann created the lighting design, Raphael Grebenstein acted as lighting director and showlight operator, alongside Johannis Laugwitz as keylight operator as well as Ole Güllich as overhead lighting technician and Younes Rellmann (von|BERG) as gaffer.
The team made extensive use of Depence R3, which was already used during the pitch phase for the creation of the renderings and in the follow-up to the pre-programming in the Solingen studio and finally on site in the Berlin Olympia Stadium. Since there was no full access to the system at first, on-site was initially programmed in Depence and adjustments were successively made to the live system. The location of the headlight systems was done in Vectorworks whereas the setup was imported via MVR into Depence R3. “The clear advantage and the necessity lie in the preparation, which takes place in a relaxed and focused environment. The production time on site did not allow us to implement the programming phase exclusively on the live system, which is why we had to rely on the software solution”, Erdmann says. The implementation of the stadium lighting and the number of fixed devices in the stadium was a challenge for the software, which was solved nonetheless thanks to the excellent Syncronorm support. The stadium's house system was natively incorporated into the GrandMA3 system, and the roof lighting was controlled from both the console and the media server. Parameter expansion was also inevitable in this project and was implemented thanks to Syncronorm. In this way, it was possible to access all local parameters without interfering with the house system, and these could also be programmed in advance, which saved a great deal of time on site. Thanks to the integration of the VizKey in Depence, many network processors could be dispensed with.
The requirement for the lighting design was to illuminate a 360° playable set consisting of the public area, infield, and center stage. In addition, the existing in-house lighting system had to be natively integrated into the lighting programming. 540 moving lights (incl. X5 Bar IP) and approx. 180 LED spotlights were used. The setup was controlled via 4 x GrandMA 3 Fullsize. The roof lighting of the house was additionally controlled by a Pixera media server via pixel mapping. The whole setup was pre-programmed with Depnece R3 at the company von|BERG GmbH in Solingen and visualized in advance. The special feature for Depence R3 was clearly the necessary performance with a total fixture count of over 3500 fixtures (stadium lighting included).
“The performance of Depence R3 once again proved the enormous visual and also technical advantage in the field of visualization software. We were once again able to rely on the excellent support and thank Syncronorm for the great cooperation. A project of this magnitude shows how important it is to be able to rely on your technical partners. Depence R3 offers lighting designers the possibility to focus on the creative work and keeps you stressless with their intuitive software.” – Flo Erdmann, 2023
