2008 Eurovision Song Contest a Showcase for Martin Lighting

Martin Professional lighting products provided the major visual impact at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest held in Belgrade, Serbia. Europe’s premiere song competition, whose lighting rigs are traditionally among the largest and most dazzling in the entertainment industry, featured over 400 Martin lights along with a huge 40 x 7 meter Martin LC Series™ LED video wall.

Held at Belgrade Arena on May 24th with semifinals held earlier in the week, the show’s theme - confluence – was interpreted visually by Swedish lighting designer Per Sundin. He commented, “In order to express this theme I needed a powerful tool and Martin’s LC Series video panels are the perfect combination of light and video. They are also valuable because of their transparency.”

The huge video wall, bent nearly 180 degrees from center and made up of 160 LC Series LED panels (120 x LC 2140 and 40 x LC 1140), created a stunning background that took only four hours to assemble, a remarkably short time for such an immense video wall.

The semi-transparent and modular system of LED panels - universally praised for its brightness and set up ease – was floor mounted upstage and used as a customizable video and graphics backdrop for each act. The LC panels use standard Prolyte CCS6 conical truss connectors, so linking the lightweight panels together is simple, and with no external power supplies or drivers, each unit comes with everything it needs built in, which reduces logistical costs and set-up time.

Due to the LC Series’ transparent nature, Per was able to locate MAC luminaires behind the panels, allowing the fixtures to shine through when the panels were not lit or discreetly disappear when they were.

The lighting package was supplied by PROCON Event Engineering of Germany and included 171 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles™ and 166 MAC 2000 Washes™ rigged from multiple ‘S’ shaped trusses, the latter used for arena wash lighting. Sixty-four industry standard Atomic 3000™ strobes were also used for an extra punch factor.

Located beneath the performance floor and providing a low lying fog effect via a series of strategically placed holes in the stage were three Jem Glaciator X-Stream™ fog generators. Not only did production personnel not have to deal with the mess of Dry Ice and CO2 (not to mention the cost), the Glaciator X-Stream is a simple ‘plug-and-play’ ground fog effect - the most powerful self-contained heavy fogger on the market.

The lighting rig also included conventional lights, other automateds and LED. PROCON was the general technical supplier, providing equipment and services for lighting, sound, video, stage, rigging and camera as well as power supply. Martin provided on site technical support from Mikkel Bach Nielsen, Britta Fabricius Olesen, Tony Van Moorleghen and headed by Product & Application Specialist Claus Jensen.

The Eurovision Song Contest has featured Martin lighting many times over the years, and was back with a complete Martin package. Martin CEO Christian Engsted commented, “We are happy to again be the preferred supplier of dreams and experiences for Europe’s TV viewers and to give both the show’s live audience and the many millions of viewers a unique wow experience together with the others involved in this year’s show.”

The show was broadcast by Serbia’s RTS network across Europe as well as Australia. This year’s winner was Dima Bilan of Russia whose heartfelt ballad “Believe” takes 2009’s contest eastward.

Sundin Designers Sweden:
Lighting Designer: Per Sundin
Ass’t LD / operator: Emma Landare
Ass’t LD / operator: Emma Westerberg
Ass’t LD / operator: Dan Persson
Ass’t LD / operator: Timo Kauristo
LED Graphics
Art director: Mikael Varhelyi
Graphic designer: Peppe Tannemyr
Graphic designer: Lennart Wåhlin

Sundin Suppliers also supplied a multi-camera director, photographers, floor-manager and venue manager