Appendix

Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Journal

Figure A.1 A Bold Lighting Look During the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony

The 2000 Summer Olympics held in Sydney Australia was a magnificent time for many of the greatest athletes of the world to gather and compete. As with most modern Olympic games extravagant productions marked the opening and closing of the games. Because the show took place in a giant sporting arena and would be seen by more than 4 billion people live via television, every bit of the production was large scale. In fact even the venue was built to serve two main purposes: the athletic events and the opening and closing ceremonies. I was honored to be part of the lighting team for these worldwide spectacles. There were far too many people involved in the production for me to list them all here, however Table A.1 lists those directly involved in the programming of the automated lighting.

The tremendous effort put forth to make these productions successful can only be credited to everyone on the team. I think this show was one of the largest collaborative efforts of lighting programmers to date. I felt it would be beneficial to myself and our industry to notate our experiences as they happened.

What follows is my daily journal that I diligently kept while working on the shows. Usually returning to my temporary home early in the morning after programming all night long, I would spend 10–15 minutes writing out the events of the day.

Brad Schiller’s Olympic Journal

Day 1, August 21, 2000

Today was the first day. We started out at Spectak Productions. In a small room we had 7 Wholehog IIs and 7 WYSIWYG computers each with a vision 2000 (see Figure A.3). Each of these computers were hooked up on a network as well. There are 21 monitors to support all this gear. We spent part of the morning hooking up monitors and getting things in place. We then talked with John Rayment (LD) about some of his plans and goals for the show.

I cleared all the desks, added the current software and merged in the patch from previous test disks. We all then set to the task of building groups as defined by John. Once the groups were built, then we had to discuss how he plans to call the fixtures. There are numbers everyplace (DMX, tech numbers, LD numbers, console numbers, etc.). We decided to number things the way the LD was used to them and we had to rename our groups to match this. Jo (assistant LD) kept bringing us paperwork with various numbers and charts and we kept updating and building groups, all the while making sure we were each building the same things. We also built seven simple color palettes to match the colors in the scrollers. (Figure A.3)

While the four main consoles were busy with this, Dean was busy building his own groups, palettes and effects with the Space Cannons. Robert Bell was continually updating the WYSIWYG file via the network. His console will control the 20 Cyberlight fixtures on the set pieces, so he was concentrating on the WYSIWYG and not worrying about his Hog show. Mark’s desk has Studio Colors and conventionals on it (set lighting) and he spent the day building his groups and palettes (and updating and correcting the WYSIWYG file with Robert).

After lunch we started the task of positions. Everything in the show is based on a huge grid laid out over the field. The grid is 29 × 47 squares. We have to make position palettes for about 1/3 of these. The plan is to use Auto Focus in WYSIWYG, but there is a hardware problem with the MIDI cards, so this is delayed until tomorrow. In the mean time, we had to discuss the best way to organize all these positions so when the LD calls out position F-20 we can quickly find it. Since we did not have the auto focus working we started out making the palettes by hand. This gave us plenty of time to figure out the best way to organize the palettes. We decided to use the page up and down keys to make a page for each letter of the alphabet (plus the three double letters) and have all the positive and negative number positions for that letter on each page. We are even going

to try to make macros to jump directly to each letter so that we can speed up the palette selection process. It would make sense to just give each position a unique number and key them in, but since the entire production from sets to choreography to lighting use the same grid system we have to maintain consistency.

At the end of the day we all had completed one line (the center “O” line) consisting of 23 palettes. Robert Bell was going to stay late to try to fix the WYSIWYG problem. For disk saving we decided to run on a three disk leapfrog method. At the end of each day I archived each final day show disk to my laptop. We also switched to new disks at least once a week to ensure good disks. Tomorrow we are planning to start by viewing the video of rehearsals and then finishing the positions. Once those are done we will start on the cuing (which John calls “plotting”).

Day 2, August 22, 2000

Today we started by viewing the videos of the opening and closing ceremonies. These were videos that were made by the Olympic committee to present the concepts of the shows. All I can say is WOW! This is going to be a huge spectacular. There are some amazing things that are going to happen.

Today we started by updating the 145 positions we each have. We used the Auto Focus feature of WYSIWYG, which made a huge difference. We would click on each point in the grid and then just record the position. This was so much easier than moving each fixture one at a time. Of course, when we get to the arena we will have to update each and every fixture in each and every position. We decided to use the “page down” method for each letter of the alphabet and this seems to work well. I built 30 macros to assist in jumping to each letter. We then merged these macros into each of the other three consoles. After this was completed, we all built stage focus positions. This was challenging, as we had to adjust the height for each of the four stages in WYSIWYG as we went along.

Next John Rayment came in and described some looks he wanted. We had to build the fence wash. This is a straight down focus around the edge of the track. Next we had to do a “horse wash,” which is a crossed focus on the fence line. This sounds simple, but for the west side we have two programmers that have to coordinate their cross focus so that the end result is a symmetrical focus. Next the east side desks have to make their focus match the west side. The problem becomes deciding the best way to do the cross focus. At first all four of us set out with our own processes for the focus. We quickly found out that we each were doing a different method. We had to stop and determine the best way to do this and then all build the focus. Using the WYSIWYG we each turned on a view to enable us to see our east or west partner.

Vickie and I brainstormed about the closing ceremony. There is no rehearsal for the show. We will have to “wing it” for most of the show. We are planning to propose to John to build 30 or so “on the fly” looks and chases that are the same on each desk. This way he can call for the random color chase on the main stage and then all of us will have the same effect. We will see what he thinks. Tomorrow we are going to the stadium to test our shows and see that everything is working correctly. Then the next 5 days or so we will be building the cues.

Day 3, August 23, 2000

We started out the day back at the Spectak office where we first watched some videos of the rehearsals and an animation of the horses. After that we began to build what are called “patterns.” These are focus positions that form a certain pattern. We first defined four sections to start with … all in the form of the Olympic Rings. We now have the “Arrivals” rings and the “Arrivals” pools. We also have the “Horses” rings and the “Horses” pools. We were very careful along the way to decide on the name of each position and make sure we all refer to it with the same label. Next we had to figure out how to build what the LD is looking for. This was straightforward for the pools, but the rings proved to be a challenge. How do you split 4 desks across 5 rings knowing that later you do not know which lights will be used for which portion of which ring? We all brainstormed on this trying to decide the best approach. We finally decided to try an idea from Jason. We each divided our lights into groups of ten and built each ring 6 (or 7 depending on the desk) times. This way we can use some or all of our lights to form any part of any ring. We then each set out to build all these positions. With 70 fixtures and 10 positions on each ring this took some time. Jason and Rohan used the WYSIWYG method. That is, they used Auto Focus to click on their screen each position and then record this to the desk. Vickie and I decided to do it the old fashioned console method and just dialed all our lights into position. When we completed these tasks, then we all packed up and went to the stadium.

We arrived at the stadium and went to see our home … WOW, we will be sitting just below the mega-VIP seating (royalty, presidents, etc.) and are in the prime spot in the very center. We then loaded up our shows and started to play with the lights. As we predicted the positions were close but not exact due to differences in fixtures versus WYSIWYG. We all then started playing when we noticed a problem. We have a steppy DMX problem. When the lights are moving slowly then appear steppy. We do not know if the problem is a Hog problem or a problem with the Strand ethernet network. The crew is going to test this by running a line directly to a console and see what happens. The problem is not seen in the WYSIWYG (even on the network) so we suspect the problem is in the boxes that convert the Ethernet back to DMX. After that we all went to a pub right next to the stadium and had some good beer.

Day 4, August 24, 2000

We started the day by building the focuses for the “Horse” rings. John had precharted which fixtures went to which rings by groups of ten. We then set out to combine our groups to make the circle. Usually it was three programmers to make the ring. It took a few minutes, but Rohan soon figured out a good method. He suggested that we each divide our ten lights and place the furthest two on a tangent to the circle and then fill in the gap evenly. This worked well and in no time we had five perfect ring focuses build by combining four desks!

Next it was time to start plotting (cuing). John came in and we all built cue 1. It was a big moment! As we continued building the cues we would all talk about how to build the needed effect and then each build it in the same manner. We also moved very carefully to make sure everyone was on the same cue. Mark was not there today (and will not be for several days), also Dean was not there. Robert took over on Dean’s console and I programmed Mark’s and mine. It was a little confusing at first until I got around his groups and built some of my own. Eventually Robert had to stay at Dean’s desk so for a while I was programming cues on three desks at one time! Sometimes, Vickie would lean over to my desk and build the cue if I was busy on the others. It will probably stay this way for the next few days.

This morning while building some of the first cues, the solution to the steppy Cybers we saw at the stadium the night before came to me. I remembered that the fixture library we are using has a bug with the Mspeed channel. The default was set for the fastest Mspeed and not Xfade. This is why we saw the jittery beams. I then realized it all clicked and all the symptoms pointed to this as the cause. The fix is very simple (change the default). I told John what I thought of and he immediately called the crew at the stadium. They agreed that this looked like this could be the solution. Tonight they tried it and I was correct . . . the problem is solved! Next we found a problem with the Mspeed chart for Cyberlight. I have confirmed (using Status Cue software) that the Mspeed chart used for Cybers is NOT the same as other High End Systems (HES) fixtures. When I finish writing this, Vickie and I will build the new chart into the Hog library. Vickie will bring up the values in Status Cue, view them as both label and DMX, then tell me and I will enter them into the library. In the morning I will rebuild all the shows with the new correct Mspeed library. Wow, we have had fun with Mspeed.

Day 5, August 25, 2000

Today I started by trying to load my new library for the Cybers. For some reason there was a bug that was ignoring the invert for the color channels. This was really annoying me as I did not even change the color mix channels, but the Hog was inverting them. It took an hour off the morning, but I finally figured out how to fix this. Once I managed to merge in the correct library I realized that this would cause all the position focuses to scrunch up one after the other. This would destroy the nice charting we made of the 145 positions. So we skipped all this and started plotting (cuing). We built a really cool chase that was building the 5 Olympic rings as the horses ran through them. This required a coordinated effort of 30 cues between the 4 desks. This took some time, but we got it worked out so that we can make the cue work. After lunch I was charting Mspeed trying to make a conversion from the incorrect chart to the correct chart to avoid the merging. Vickie suggested making palettes of the common Mspeed values. We built the palettes based on what the Mspeed should be and assigning it to the equivalent incorrect Mspeed chart in the library we are using. We continued building cues and I was still programming on two desks. At the end of the day we had all built about 100 total cues and made it about 2/5th through the show. Tomorrow (Saturday) is a day off and Vickie and I plan to go with Henry and Victory to experience the Sydney Harbor Bridge climb. For a small fee we will get to climb to the top of one of the most famous bridges in the world and enjoy a splendid view of Sydney Harbor. John is going to a rehearsal. After this we will not get a day off again for 3 weeks until after the show is over! The show is 3 weeks from tonight.

Day 6, August 26, 2000

This was a day off. Vickie and I went to the bridge climb on our own. No one else wanted to go (chickens!). It was a lot of fun. They have planned it very well and thought of everything. We did a night climb, which was fun, but I would suggest a day climb as the photos are better.

Day 7, August 27, 2000

We started off the day with John telling us his plans for how far we should get today. All seven programmers were here today so we all could work just on our own desks. We started building simple cues, and then we hit another huge sequence. For the “Fire” section we had to have all the lights move from the north to the south of the field. They had to move in a 40-meter wide chunk. It had to look as if this “chunk” was moving down the field. This sounds simple until you think about fading in and out lights five at a time and doing this across four desks. Everyone started trying to figure out the best way to do this and we were getting no place. Finally I got out a piece of paper and charted it out. It ended up taking 20 cues each with various groups of lights fading in and out. I then called out all the lights for each cue and whoever had them on their desk would enter the correct information. Once we finished this, then we had to apply the timing John wanted (40 seconds to center and 1 minute from there to the end). Finally we could run the cue. This minute and half cue took about 45 minutes to write. We are all learning the best methods for programming on multiple desks. Thank goodness that John is calm and has the ability to look at the big picture. This means he has to look at seven WYSIWYG screens at one time and envision what the real cue will look like. We can turn multiple (or all) lights on one WYSIWYG, but this just gets really busy on the screen with too many lines. (Figure A.4)

We then continued onward plotting more cues. John would call out groups of lights and their positions on the grid. We would each use our macros to jump to the correct letter (section of the grid) and choose the exact coordinate. This method seems to work great and speed up finding positions. Late in the day we also built a combined color look where we each used four colors across four pools on the field. John then said that on each side of the field he wanted alternating colors from each programmer and then the inverse from the other side of the field.

Two ideas I had to make large group programming sessions easier in the future is to: (a) have a sign like the post office (now serving #) and use as now building cue number and (b) have a large wipe board in the room for charting out these large coordinated efforts.

Day 8, August 28, 2000

Another day of WYSIWYG. We are now over 180 cues and just about to the athletes’ entrance. Today we all had the same feeling . . . we are ready to get onto the real rig. This much WYSIWYGing with just sections of the rig really removes us from the big picture. The renderings we do every night of the entire rig help. However, it is still hard to watch the rehearsal videos and realize that it is the same big show we are lighting. On Wednesday we move into the stadium and it should all come together for us then.

We built some other big coordinated cues and have found an important key . . . we write down exactly what John says he is looking for and then we brainstorm. This way there is no confusion later as to what he wants. John also seems to now see that he has to think about the time it takes to build a coordinated cue (all lights fade up from center to out) versus the end result for the show. Many times it may be better to not take the time to build a huge cue that may be too subtle for the audience or TV.

Day 9, August 29, 2000

Today was the last day at Spectak working with just WYSIWYG. We started the morning building cues. We all charted and made the map of Australia by combining all desks. This cue looks really cool when you see the lights form the outline. Next Compaq came in and did a big photo shoot that took too long. They are supplying the computers and monitors we use for WYSIWYG. After lunch we built more cues and had several other coordinated cues. These went much better as we all have the routine down now. We then went though all our cues and noted which focuses we are using. Of the 145 original positions on the grid we are each using about 33–35. We also have each created an additional 70 custom positions. Since we have charted this, we will only update the focuses we used. When we start programming in the stadium, we will still have the WYSIWYG hooked up. We can then see if when we use a palette that we have not updated on the real rig yet (it will be off in WYSIWYG, but not the real lights). The next two nights we will be updating positions and then start in with rehearsals.

Day 10, August 30, 2000

Well, we started in the stadium tonight. It was quite a site to see all seven desks lined up in the center of the audience! We set off updating our positions. We sent Dave down to the field to mark the positions with cones (witches hats). We then started to focus the positions that we actually used in cues. The plan was to have each person do each position so that we would not put too much light on the field. This did not go well as some people did not like waiting, so we started doing multiple positions at a time. This worked okay except that it was not completely dark on the field. There were sports lights on for the crew putting down the flooring and working on the stage. This became a problem for me as I have 30 of my lights on the extreme ends of the truss. With the throw distance they are very difficult to see. Since I am on the opposite side of the field, my lights are harder to see than those on the same side as us. Rohan has his fixtures on the other side too, but they are all near center. I became somewhat frustrated because some of the programmers were not respecting the darkness needed for me to see my fixtures. I had to repeatedly ask them to not work on washes, audience lights, etc. Their lights had no dim problems and they did not understand. I just put on my headphones and tried to get over it. Hopefully tomorrow we will get some dark time. Plus, right now the real floor is not down and Dave is measuring the positions. I am sure that we will have to update them all again (and again). We have a great vantage point for the show (dead center), but with all our monitors it is kind of cramped. We are supposed to get some flat screens in and that should help. Oh yea, we also discovered that WYSIWYG had the zoom backwards so we had to invert the zoom data in all our cues.

Day 11, August 31, 2000

Second night in the stadium. Tonight was pretty much the same as last night. Jo and Dave had worked out a good system for placing the cones and this helped. They had part of the flooring down (carpet actually), but it was placed the wrong way around. Dave got a little confused at one point where it measured differently than the floor was marked. We will have to wait until the floor is down to really know for sure if everything is correct. I ran through my cues and WOW it looks good. When focusing one light at a time I was losing site of the big picture. I really was not seeing great levels of light; however, once I ran the cues and saw the pools form, etc. I could really see the big picture. The production is so huge that we are running into other problems too … that is we have not had dark time yet because there are others working on the stage and the floor. Also, the lighting techs are shutting down our fixtures and leaving at 2 A.M. so we have to stop. We have asked to have techs waiting until we are done so that we can work longer. Tomorrow (Friday) is our last day off until after the show. We start again on Saturday with rehearsals. Tonight we also finally got to see the cauldron light and rise up the stadium. This is going to be a really cool moment when it happens. It is supposed to be a big surprise, but I just saw shots on TV from last night’s rehearsal. They even mentioned the “laser lights” referring to the Space Cannons. Oh yea . . . also I spoke with Megan and told her about the lamp strobing and boosting on the Studio Beams. She then put all 250 fixtures in the lamp strobing and it was great!

Day 12, September 1, 2000

This was our last day off until after the show. We start tomorrow working for 14 nights straight. We got a VIP tech tour of the Sydney Opera House.

Day 13, September 2, 2000

Today was the first day of rehearsals. Also, it marked the first time we arrived since lockdown had started. We had to go through security to get in. It was still daylight when we arrived (5 P.M.) so we went and had dinner. Then we started working with our fixtures trying to run some cues while the performers were rehearsing “Nature” and “Tin.” We had the entire rig and the sports lights were off. However, the Halide Metal Inert gas (HMIs) still had no scrollers on them so now we had our own white light to fight. We parked the HMIs at 0, but then the techs told us that there is a heat shield problem and that we have to leave the shutters open. So now we had to leave all our HMIs open and in white on the field. This made it very frustrating for everyone as we really could not do any work. Finally when rehearsal was over, we were able to power down the HMIs and we could finally have dark time. This was the first time that we had dark time in the stadium. We all started checking positions, etc. Also, Dean finally had all his space cannons working and was able to update his focuses too. So again we all had to share the darkness and respect what the others were doing so that we could all see. We had Jo and Dave lay out cones for the “Horse” rings and we all touched up those positions. We then ran the cues (Dean blacked out for us) and they looked GREAT! It was super to see all four desks form the Olympic Rings and then morph into pools.

On the way back to the bus we hopped a ride in the back of a police paddy wagon! We all climbed in the cage and the door was locked shut.

Day 14, September 3, 2000

What a wasted day. We had to show up at 4 P.M. today for the techs. The sun was out so we did not do anything until later. Once it was dark out we could do things, except that it was protocol rehearsal. This is lit in solid white light and takes a long time. This includes the volunteers and the athletes’ parade. So we sat there doing nothing most of the night. Once we got to a point that we had to do something, the Strand network failed and we all had no signal to our lights. It turned out that a UPS was unplugged and we were running all day on the UPS, but it finally died. At about midnight we finally had dark time again and we were able to finish our positions. Jo and Dave mapped out the “Arrival” rings and we all placed all our lights on each of the rings. We also touched up some other focuses. Dean went down to the field to program the Space Cannons. The HMIs will not be ready with their scrollers until Tuesday, so on Monday we will not do much either. Then we will start on Tuesday with late nights plotting cues.

Day 15, September 4, 2000

Tonight we rehearsed “Nature” and they did it in full costume. It was nice to see the show start to come together. We ran our cues, but we dimmed out the HMIs as we did not have the scrollers. Dean had about half his Space Cannons working and was doing the color washes on the field. John had a camera and a monitor so he could check how it will look on camera. Dean had a great amber wash on the floor that looked great to the eye, but was really dull on camera. When asked if he could make them redder, he said the amber was as close to red as they can get. This will mean that we may have to alter some cues to try to compensate. We stopped early to let the crew work on the HMIs. We watched a full rehearsal of the cauldron and this was incredible. Tomorrow we start working from 6 P.M. till 5 A.M. and hopefully will get everything to work and are able to work on our cues. Megan has started adding in cues for the audience lights (she now has about eight).

Day 16, September 5, 2000

Tonight they rehearsed part of “Tin” and then “Arrivals.” “Arrivals” is the section where the people form a giant map of Australia and then 2000 children run into the map. It was great that once the people formed the map (before the kids ran in), the director stopped them and made them stand in place while we focused all 300 Cybers on them. After “Arrivals” they rehearsed the athletes’ entrance again. This took about an hour and we all just took a break. After that the field was ours. The director of

“Tin” came up and sat with John and we all plotted cues. When we would build a look then John would say “feed the machine cue 160.” We finally had all the scrollers working today although each one could crash at any time and this is somewhat worrisome. Dean reverted back to a crew person to get all the Procon gear working and Brendon took over programming the Space Cannons. We had to stop at 2:30 A.M. because the bomb sweep was going on. Tomorrow we are starting the long hours. The stage crew had to rip up the flooring and pull all the plywood they put down as it was becoming a real mess.

Day 17, September 6, 2000

Tonight we rehearsed “Deep Sea Dreaming.” This number is very amazing. There are fish flying all over the place. We also watched the horses rehearse. After the cast left we sat and programmed the end of the show (speeches, etc.) and watched the cauldron again. We are all running into a few problems where we will alter a cue and we must think ahead to the next cue and not destroy our tracking. Each of us have run into situations where we edit one cue and then find we have ruined another by changing a focus in the first cue that tracked into the next cue. To prevent this we are trying to remember to load state and update cues before altering prior cues. Jo and Rohan Thorton went up in a helicopter to check the Space Cannon and audience cues from that camera point of view. There are still many problems with the HMIs and scrollers. Hopefully this will get worked out soon.

Day 18, September 7, 2000

We rehearsed the end of “Eternity” tonight, which is when most of the cast from all the sections comes out on the field. This was the first time they ever assembled everybody and they spent time learning new choreography. After that the horses rehearsed again. We adjusted and rehearsed our cues. After rehearsals we plotted cues for the torch entries and the cauldron. We then all left and let Brendon have some time to get his positions built. We still have HMI and scroller problems.

Day 19, September 8, 2000

We saw “Awakenings” for the first time. This section has a large Aboriginal cast. They rehearsed part of their number, but I do not think they rehearsed all of it. Next we rehearsed with the horses again. We had to modify our horse rings to the actual rings they were making. John rebuilt the first few cues several times before landing on the HMIs during the horses’ entrance and the Space Cannons for their exits. Next we ran through most of the cues and made adjustments from John’s notes. Tomorrow is the first dress rehearsal with an audience of 110,000. It will be the first time the show has been run in order in its entirety (except the cauldron). The scrollers and HMIs still were not all working, but TV likes the splotchy white areas, so now we will have to build in some of the “messed up” looks that we have had due to equipment problems.

Day 20, September 9, 2000

We had the first ever run through of the entire show and in front of 110,000 people! Lighting wise we had no train wrecks or major problems. John has his work cut out for him on getting the lighting correct for TV. Often during the rehearsal he was trying to add more light and the TV people kept trying to adjust. They ended up just fighting each other. At the end of the night they had a big meeting and worked everything out.

Day 21, September 10, 2000

Tonight was another first . . . we had the stadium all to ourselves to work on cuing. There were no other rehearsals and we had a great night of plotting. John had several of the directors come up and we rebuilt the cues for those sections. We had one camera on the monitor so we could watch the levels. Everyone really liked our horse ring cue last night, except that it was not bright enough for television. They want to do an aerial shot as we build the rings as the horses form them. We had originally built this 30 part cue using 10 lights from each console in each ring. We decided to rebuild these cues and use 40 lights from each console per ring. We also decided to only use the lights closest to the ring. So Rohan and I had 3 rings and Vickie and Jason have 2 rings. Also, Rohan and I tried to make them so that the dimmer lights (without narrow lenses) are closer than those with narrow lenses. This made mine somewhat difficult as I had fixtures in a wacky order. The rings read very well now on the camera and we all feel really good about this (now) 40 part cue. Tomorrow we will start again with rehearsals of some sections and rebuilding of some cues for “Arrivals” and “Eternity.”

Day 22, September 11, 2000

We started the night watching while the band rehearsed their entrance and exit. This sounds quick and easy, but with a marching band of 2500 it is no easy task. During the wait, Vickie and I got to hold a real Olympic torch. It was not heavy as we had been told. After that we rehearsed the horses again. This time all 400 were wearing in-ear monitors so it made it difficult to know what they were doing etc. Our new improved horse rings look great. The problem now is that the horses do not form the same rings every time. Because the TV crew plans to do an over head shot (which looks great) we are going to get our rings looking great and let the horses look like they did not form them correctly. We also watched the cauldron again and the TV crew rehearsed their shots. This is going to look super on television and in-person. After the horses, we plotted more cues and started some cleaning up of cues. Tomorrow we will do a technical rehearsal and go through all the cues and do “housekeeping.”

Day 23, September 12, 2000

Tonight was a technical rehearsal that went on till about 1:30 A.M. when it stopped due to technical errors. We actually saw some new flying elements for “Tin” that we had never seen. We also found out that our horse ring cue has been cut. All the work we did is now gone. Oh well, maybe it will get added back in. After the rehearsal ended, we all plotted cues for several more hours. John is having a tough time with various directors, television people, artistic directors, etc. all giving their input to how they think the lighting should be. We are continually making changes to most of our cues and trying to keep up with all the tracking information. Tomorrow is another dress rehearsal and we are all looking forward to it.

Day 24, September 13, 2000

Tonight’s dress rehearsal in front of 110,000 went very well. Everything ran extremely smooth up until “Eternity.” This section needs a lot of work in all areas, not just lighting. TV liked most of the show and we just need to balance some of the images to get rid of hot spots, etc. Rohan Thorton has been very good about filling us in on all the politics currently going on. The television director will say the segment looks great, but he wants to light the people exiting each segment so he wants us to hold the lighting looks longer. The segment director will want to relight the entire number with new colors, pools, etc. The artistic director wants to get the transitions happening sooner so that we do not see the people exiting. Each of these people come to John and voice their opinion. He has to try to figure out how to please everyone (and himself). If he makes the changes for the segment director, then the television director complains and vice versa. Rohan has asked that we all try to make “commonsense” decisions on our own and modify looks that we feel should be modified. This is a usual thing for programmers to do and most LDs just never know it happens or take it for granted. This is fairly easy for half the programmers, but the four of us with the bulk of the Cybers have to act as one. If one of us changes our Cybers to 60% then it looks funny if the other 3 desks are at 100%. So we all just talk and decide what will be best.

After rehearsal we did a cue by cue run through to do “housekeeping” on all our cues, setups, etc. We worked until 5 A.M. John had left to light a building downtown, so Jo called us through the cues and gave us John’s notes. Tomorrow we will go through all the cues again with John and Rohan and modify all levels for television.

Day 25, September 14, 2000

Tonight we worked until 6 A.M. cleaning up cues and rebuilding “Awakenings” and “Eternity.” We had to stop working for more than 2 hours while they rehearsed with the torchbearers. Their identity is supposed to be kept secret so we had to leave it dark during the entire time. We all feel that we have a fantastic show and are ready to run the show tomorrow.

Day 26, September 15, 2000

WOW, what a super show! We all had a great time and everything worked perfectly. We made a few live adjustments and that added to the fun. We were able to watch the TV show on a monitor in front of us while watching the real show at the same time. It looked super! Even the segments and cues that we rebuilt at 4 A.M. the night before looked incredible. The crowd enjoyed the show and seeing 110,000 people wave their flashlights in the stands was awesome. Vickie and I cheered on the U.S. team as they entered and then we all cheered for Australia. Then it was time for the lighting of the cauldron. This was going great until the trolley got stuck and the cauldron did not move. This was a very scary moment for all of us to see this huge moment almost not work. After what seemed like forever (actually was about 3 minutes) the cauldron made its way to the top. The crowd still loved it and every one was thrilled. After the show we all partied until after 6 A.M. We were told that during the show designer Patrick Woodroff called and said this was the best light show he had ever seen!

<TIME OFF DURING THE OLYMPIC GAMES>

Day 40, September 29, 2000

Tonight we went back to the stadium to begin working on the “Closing.” The crew was in last night to check the rig. Everything was

 

working well. Vickie has flown back to the States and now Gooch is programming her desk, also Robert Bell has gone home. We first sat down with John and discussed his plans for the show. We then formulated the best way to lay this out on the consoles. We decided to set it up much like a rock show and make different pages for each song or segment of the closing. This way we can have bumps, chases, etc. specific to that song. We will each have a master cuelist on a template page and then add in the other cues via the separate pages. Gooch and I also have two faders for HMIs on the template page. In addition, we have to be ready to throw in anything that John calls out. Basically tonight we roughed in some positions with the sports lights still on. Tomorrow we will have it darker, but still not complete darkness. Then on Sunday we see a daytime rehearsal and then run the show for the world that night. There is very little setup or rehearsal time. One good thing is that we will get in ear monitors of the music so we can do things on the beat. Things went well until they turned the power off on us at 4:30 A.M.

Day 41, September 30, 2000

When I walked into the stadium they were playing the U.S. National Anthem. It was a medal ceremony and the United States had won gold. This was great to walk in and cheer on our winners, and they were just down in front of me too. We started working sometime after midnight and worked through the night till almost 6 A.M. We never had any dark time as they were building the stage and had sports lights up all night long. We managed to plot cues for about half the songs. We also prepared “wing it” masters and palettes for the rest of the show. John has notes on what he wants to do, we just do not have cues for it. Tomorrow we have a rehearsal in the daytime and then the show starts. We plan to update positions on the stages during the preshow as this will be the first dark time we have with the stages in place. One interesting thing is that this is the type of show that it is easy for a programmer to just wing it, but since the rig is spread across eight consoles this is now difficult. If I decide to throw in a random strobe at a point in a song and no one else does, then my lights look like they are doing the wrong thing. So we all just have to count on John to call what he wants and that is what we will do. We went home, had about 4 hours sleep, and now go back for the rehearsal and show.

Day 42, October 1, 2000

We went in at noon and the stage was still not built. During the day they built the stage and we sat around. We never actually rehearsed anything. Doors were at 4 P.M., but they held them till about 4:30. Even then, they were still building the stage. Around 6 P.M. the marathon runners came in, and then at 7:30 was the preshow. This was our only time to update positions. The show started at 8 P.M. We all turned on “live programmer” and off we went. We had preprogrammed about half the songs in the show and the rest we just made up as we went along. During the show John would call “stand by for all Cybers on stage in blue from east and magenta from west . . . Go.” We all also improvised during most of the songs using the “wing it” stuff we had premade. The show looked great and John was very happy. He was thrilled that many times we all just took over and made the show happen and then he would call just the major changes, etc. Mark Hammer did a super job with the fixtures on the stage and we all had a great time.