Eurovision 2014

      In a groundbreaking design, the show’s creative director, Per Zachariassen and lighting designer Kasper Lange (with whom he has worked for ten years) ensured that content throughout the 26 artistes performing could be delivered to four different surfaces, allowing the stage to be transformed from act to act. This included the huge, classic SGM LED back wall — measuring 110 metres wide by 13 metres high — and it was here that over 350 SixPack blinders were used to such dramatic effect.

 

The SixPack pixel blinders, that last year’s production director Ola Melzig had fallen in love with in Malmö, were in evidence again as Kasper Lange used most of a complete inventory of 362 SixPacks to form a dazzling, pixel-mapped back wall matrix effect. Each fixture combines six outputs of powerful 40W colour mixing with built-in electronics, and individual DMX control over each lamp, to boost the LD’s creativity.

 

Given a free hand to design and specify the show, he was using the fixture for the first time — and was thoroughly impressed. “I had a strong idea where I wanted to go with the design — and the SixPacks are a good, stable and very powerful fixture which we used selectively, as special effects.” A Hippotizer was used for the pixel mapping and the lighting was controlled from a series of grandMA desks.

 

Although Lange is experienced at working high profile TV talent shows for DR, including X Factor, Denmark’s Got Talent and Danish Eurovision, he admits, “This was the largest project I have been involved in — by far.”

 

To get an idea of scale, the production, in which 450 staff were engaged, attracted an expected television audience of more than 120 million fans. Figures released the following day showed Eurovision generated 5.4 million tweets on social media, with a peak Twitter activity of 47,136 tweets per minute when Wurst's victory was announced.