TOUR DE FRANCE

It’s not every day that a city gets the chance to host the world’s biggest sporting event, but the beginning of July was London’s turn when it saw a staggering four million people descend for the Tour de France’s Le Grand Départ.

The event created a series of firsts — this was both the first time London had hosted Le Grand Départ and the first time the race itself had actually started in the UK, despite its two previous visits in 1974 and 1994.

The weekend’s action comprised the Opening Ceremony in Trafalgar Square on July 6, the Time Trials the following day (with a 7.9km route around London’s most spectacular landmarks), and the Hyde Park Cycling festival and Stage 1 of the race itself on July 8, which started in Central London, travelled out through Kent and finished in the county town of Canterbury.

It also gave event agency innovision the chance to show just how London can be transformed for major events, when it helped to deliver the creative and host city technical elements for the event’s organiser, Transport for London (TfL).

Led by MD Will Glendinning, innovision’s team and suppliers are well versed in putting on large-scale multi-agency events and with experience of working in central London, a necessity given the scale of the operation.

“From the outset, I was confident we had the talent and experience in our team to deliver a truly memorable event,” said Glendinning. “However, I really wanted the event to recapture the public’s excitement and imagination of what a unique location London is and the potential available in the city. London is a world class venue and this project had to be delivered properly. I am very proud of the team in this respect and we have much more to offer.”

The planning process led and co-ordinated by innovision took over a year and involved TfL (who won the rights to host the event in the UK and took on the marketing and PR of the event in London, with head of special projects, Mick Hickford at the helm), ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation, owner of the Tour de France), Metropolitan Police, Westminster City Council, The Royal Parks, The Greater London Authority, Kent County Council, Canterbury City Council and over 250 other stakeholders.

The reward for the meticulous preparation was three days of faultless delivery by innovision’s 6,000 staff, crew and personnel and a total of almost 21,000 people who all helped bring the event to fruition, facilitated by a comprehensive multi-agency communication, management, briefing and deployment process.

A specific type of barrier was positioned inside the standard crowd barrier to protect the riders, who were travelling at speeds of up to 60km an hour. The infrastructure also included pedestrian bridges, seating and the formulation of a robust crowd management, security and safety plan in liaison with all local authorities and emergency services.

It also involved the development and implementation of the largest transport and road closure plan ever put in place for an event in the UK, the management and coordination of all airspace activity, working with the CAA and providing support, temporary helicopter drop zones and all relevant temporary restrictions of air space.

The media, press and broadcast presence was also a significant factor. Full consultation was undertaken with both UK and foreign TV companies and work was undertaken collaboratively, so that all parties could maximise the potential of the Tour de France. Press and media centres were positioned at ExCeL in London’s Docklands and Canterbury High School to provide a home for 2,500 press, officials and media.

Trafalgar Square
In Trafalgar Square itself, a bespoke stage, clean and uncluttered in design, devised by innovision and realised by Star Events Group (SEGL), was positioned over the stairs of the north terrace, flanked by two LED screens supplied by Creative Technology (CT) with a PA system from Delta Sound.

“The original concept for the stage came from Will Glendinning, and then our design team worked with technical production manager Malcolm Birkett to come up with a practicable solution,” explained SEGL’s Pete Holdich.

A stock 12m circular truss was enlarged to form a 13.5m diameter stage roof that was supported by four masts above the curved platform. “There was a lot of initial head scratching about how we were actually going to achieve this,” smiled Phil Addyman, who worked alongside Holdich. “But our designer, Steve Horton, came up with the solution.

“We supplied two screen monoliths, one either side of the stage, which were around 10m tall, to support CT’s pair of portrait format screens, along with a front of house truss. We also provided cable bridges around the entire site including one on the Strand, one in Whitehall, and one around the Serpentine. We had to fit in with road closures and ran night and day shifts with a crew of 28 to meet the deadline.”

Delta’s PA for the Square comprised L-Acoustics V-DOSC loudspeakers controlled via XTA DP226 digital signal processors and AudioCore 8.4 software. “We had a DiGiCo D5 Live console operated by Richard Sharratt, covering playback from CT and radio microphones along with around 40 press feeds and a broadcast mix,” explained Delta designer and project engineer Steve Lutley.

“A Yamaha PM5D, FM115 wedges and a Sennheiser G2 in-ear system covered monitor requirements and we had a Midas Heritage 3000 for [opening act] Lemar, as requested by his FOH engineer, Steve Levett.

System technician, Al Woods said: “We put a rack-mounted computer at FOH and we network that wirelessly to a tablet, to take over the whole of the mother computer. This is a great method because it means you can access more than one programme on the tablet. You can have your Smart analysing system on the tablet, carry a mic around with you and switch between Smart and AudioCore, working in real time instead of having to go back to front of house.”

The music for the Opening Ceremony had been specially composed by Julian Scott. Delta MD Mark Bonner commented: “The show’s executive producer, Kathleen Gearhart-Filmer, is a really clever lady and produced a show with Will and the innovision team that was perfect for the audience demographic and did an excellent job of breaking up what was, in effect, simply introducing 190 cyclists.

“Two French children and two English children moved around the different areas, performing live to camera footage. Steve had to follow them around, getting radio mics on top of buildings, backstage and away up the street. In fact, the communications and stage management for that element became a job in itself, as there were so many people coming on and off stage and everything had to be done in two languages.”

Lighting design for the Opening Ceremony was by Paul Cook, with PRG supplying equipment. “I was requested to light the event with the minimum quantity of equipment possible,” said Cook. This was to ensure the look of the circular roof was enhanced and the stage area was lit to allow the best quality TV pictures.

“The event was due to go to air exactly as the sun was beginning to set to the west of Trafalgar Square. I had to use a strong key light that could work with the setting sun to ensure the faces of the competitors remained shadow free.

“The layout of the stage within Trafalgar Square, along with the request by innovision for unobstructed sight lines, meant the only position available to me for this key light was from the base of Nelson’s Column, over 300ft from the stage! So, to get the required punch, I used four 6kW Arrisun PARs rigged from an 8m gantry. This provided about 2000 lux at the stage that approximately matched the setting sun.”

In addition to the key light, 12 Martin MAC 2000 Wash lights were rigged from the circular roof structure and used to back/top light the teams as they were interviewed on the stage. The set was further enhanced with Studio Due City Colors which uplit a large graphic positioned over the stage, with 30 DB4 units focused directly back to the camera position.

Cook continued: “Immediately after the introduction of the teams, Lemar and his band started their set with a cover version of Queen’s 'Bicycle Race'. The moving lights, LEDs and a 2000 watt Lycian long throw follow spot [operated by Martin Scott] were then used to light the band in a more conventional manner.

“The lighting crew of Scott, Chris Dunsford, Mike Dixon and Duncan Burgess all did a splendid job, battling with the rather unseasonal elements during the fit up, to put together a perfect rig for me to use.”

“We have a long standing relationship with Paul, which made things very easy for us,” added PRG’s project manager, Loz Wilcox. “Martin and his team installed the majority of the lights the previous week. We were only there for the Friday, as the other two days were daytime events, so Malcom Birkett decided we could get our equipment out on the Friday night straight after the show, which made logistics much easier all round.”

Out and about
A total of 19 LED screens, including those in Trafalgar Square (the largest number of mobile and modular LED screens ever deployed for an event in the capital), were strategically positioned in viewing areas around central London throughout the weekend, giving free access sites for the public to watch the action.

With Stuart Young in charge of acquisition and logistics and Dave Herd in charge of management and delivery, CT supplied 50 video crew, cameras and a video production facility based in Trafalgar Square. This relayed pictures and incoming satellite feeds to all remote screen sites.

“We handled all consultation of video coverage and the method of distribution of signal to remote sites, to provide video coverage for the Opening Ceremony,” said CT’s Dave Herd. “This was followed by production of a TV channel on Saturday and Sunday, consisting of the unilateral picture feeds from the French host broadcaster, with English commentary, mixed with pre-recorded video footage, timings of competitors and public safety messaging.”

“Delta supplied the audio delays for each screen,” added Lutley. “Nearly all of them were dV-DOSC. The only ones that weren’t were in places where we physically couldn’t put up a mast and there we used ground sets of d&b.

“Every delay was mirrored using Yamaha LS9s. We made one up in the shop, and put the settings on a USB key so that each was exactly the same.”

COMMS
The size and scale of the communications system for Le Grand Départ was unprecedented and, to ensure delivery was joined up, innovision developed a master plan for London, Medway and Kent. This was co-ordinated in one central location with the implementation of a powerful, secure and simple to use web-based information portal, allowing registered parties to share information in a structured manner and all using the same protocols.

From an original brief to supply 250 walkie-talkies, Delta ended up running its most complicated communications system to date — and possibly the biggest ever used in the UK. It grew to encompass 200 vehicles, all kitted out with radio systems, around 2,400 marshals, the innovision team and all-subcontractors. Delta’s Phil Kidd arranged for 19 antennae to be set up in London and across Kent, covering 30 on-site personnel at the press centre in ExCel, as well as around 300 units for the marshals in London.

Delta was invited by Ofcom to talk about the frequencies required. “We were told not to worry as all our frequencies were already allocated. Not only that, but we’d been given twice as much power as we asked for, just in case we needed it. That’s unheard of in our industry,” said Mark Bonner. Now that’s very interesting, considering the PMSE sector’s current fight with Ofcom over frequency allocation!

The weekend held great significance for the governing bodies in London, reportedly being the only function of this size to take place in the City prior to the 2012 Olympics, with the Tour de France Opening Ceremony providing a benchmark to assess how the services and city can cope with the expected figures during the Olympics period.

If the Tour de France’s Le Grand Départ is anything to go by, London should feel confident that it will cope admirably in 2012.

Bonner summed up what seemed to have been the general feeling of all involved: “innovision’s team was fantastic. There were about 20 or 30 production managers, from various disciplines, that we work with all year round and they were a pleasure to be around. It was like they were all old friends.

“Everybody wanted to help deliver the show. Without exception, everyone was very helpful, so everybody went away excited, and smiling.”

Other key suppliers included Capita Symonds, Summit Steel, Templine, Entertee, Arena Seating, Showstars, WG Search and Show & Event Security.