Bullring, Birmingham son-et-lumiere on a building site - Part 2 of 3

8th November 2001 - the 'new' Birmingham Bullring shopping centre is under construction. The developers want to put on a show for the retailers who are interested in taking floor space. The idea is to give them some idea of how things might look, once the project is completed.

Lucy Smail (West Design & Production) is engaged to project-manage and produce the show. She enlists the help of the (now, sadly departed) Dave Bryant to create 'something interesting and memorable'.

Now to set the scene....

It's November, it's cold, wet and windy. The show is to be run from the car-park above the old market, which overlooks the building site, and has a panoramic view of the entire area. The punters are to be housed in a temporary structure on the roof of the car-park, whilst the technicians run the show from floor below. I am one of the crew, bemused as to how this is all going to pan-out. We have about a week to get the show onto the site, which of course is an active construction site and a 'place of work' under the Health and Safety Act.

Now Lucy is a hard task master, with very high standards and expectations, and Dave is frankly, nuts. He's gifted as a lighting designer and producer of stunning special events, a visionary, but definitely likes to 'push the envelope'. This is a once-in-a-lifetime gig for Dave.....a chance to blow a whole load of somebody else's cash by putting on a son-et-lumiere that covers the building site and many acres around it - including the construction cranes and surrounding buildings as a projection surface.

So what could possibly go wrong? Well we are a couple of days into the get-in, and it;s clear that this is not going to be an easy ride. The Health and Safety police have really got their teeth into this show. hardly surprising.....serious 3-phase generators running huge lighting rigs across a working building site, in the pouring rain and ice. Not the best situation....

Then some IRA terrorist decides that they are going to place a bomb right beside us in the shopping centre. BANG.......like you've never heard a bang this loud in your life. There are loads of us on site, wondering what the hell has happened. It takes some time before the police and emergency services have worked-out what is going on.

It turns-out that the bomb hasn't actually gone off - the bang is just the detonator going off. Jeez......that was a close shave. The trouble now is that we are in the middle of a tight get-in, on a difficult project, and the site has been sealed off, in case there is more to come, and so the whole scene can be investigated......and this situation goes on for the next couple of days.

By the time we are allowed back on-site, our deadline is approaching fast, there's no time to run through the show, and some of the key performers, perhaps unsurprisingly, have had cold feet, and bailed out. Lucy is getting stressed, Dave is swearing, and it;s all starting to get rather fractious.

So with no more than a couple of days left, the script is being drastically re-written, extra crew have been brought in, and nobody quite believes that this is ever gonna happen. But Lucy keeps the paymasters sweet, and in true DB style - we start to 'wing it'. Rather than working to a previously well planned design, we are now into the realms of 'just do the best you can'.

Sound system on site, videos and projections edited, lighting desk programmed, lighting just about everywhere, pyro in place, sound effects loaded into the sampler software on the PC, and the guests are arriving.....fingers crossed. Speeches from important people go roughly to plan, and the buffet starts and champagne is flowing. It looks like we are going to make it......

DB is calling the show - I don't think we had any sort of rehearsal at all, but here we go 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and then nothing. Not a bloody sausage....bugger all. The power has just died....all three phases. No comms, no lights, no sound, nothing.......

Within about 5 minutes we had discovered that the caterers had ' just plugged in another cooker'......

So with the generator and power supply running again, we are counting down, whilst trying to re-boot computers, load configs into lighting and sound desks and just praying.

These three sections of video were recorded on a hand-held camcorder and document the much of the event, as seen by the crew from the car-park. Somewhere, there is a professionally-made promo video, but for the techies, this one is far more interesting.

Enjoy the huge projections, (controlled) explosives, miles of rope light and festoon, moving lights, synchronised angle grinding and welding, dancing tower cranes, bungee jumping orchestra conductor leaping from a crane, and Lucy starring in her own show, as dozens of high-vis-wearing construction workers snap photos.

More DB madness - RIP Dave, we remember you this way :-)