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Mission Mercedes on Sixth Street Bridge

An international team from show and event technical production specialists More To Show delivered a star-studded event at the Sixth Street Bridge in Los Angeles to launch the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé for global PR and communications agency OSK.

 

Working closely with OSK and London-based creative specialist Consul and their client Mercedes’ creative departments, More To Show, led by technical design director and founder Jordi Vandekerkhof, combined the forces and talents of innovative minds and technical experts from its Belgium HQ and Los Angeles operations to present smart solutions for audio, lighting, video, pyro, staging and rigging that realized OSK’s and Mercedes’ visions.

 

The result transformed the raw beauty of this famous urban industrial landmark into an adrenaline fueled “Autobahn experience” for the evening, a dynamic space that showcased the power of the cars. The basic design concept was already in place from OSK and Consul and Mercedes themselves, so More To Show’s mission was to transform the Sixth Street location into a vibrant event environment for the launch.

 

The event site was divided into five main zones: A grandstand that straddled the road creating a tunnel through which cars drove at high-speed for the demos - passing under a massive LED “Autobahn” sign as they emerged; the road/track lane itself; a Mercedes presentation area; plus, a festival-style food and refreshment truck area for mingling and networking.

 

The production also needed a temporary stage to support California rockers Blink-182 who played a set to wrap the launch event for 600 invited guests and celebrities. Additionally, the More To Show team designed and established a supporting site infrastructure that received around 230 trucks of production equipment and included multiple working event-run and backstage areas, including accommodating power generators, trailer parking, evacuation routes, etc.

 

Everything - including the event itself - had to be set up in a 48-hour build window, following months of intense logistics getting all the permissions in place, checking out weight loadings and certifications required, booking the contractors and planning a seamless event.

 

On site, during the build and technical periods, up to 350 technical crew had to be simultaneously co-ordinated, which took management, structuring transparency and constant interdepartmental communication. More To Show recently founded sister company Ombre to specialize in all areas of lighting, so their team, led by lighting designer Luc De Climmer, was also instrumental in delivering the “production magic”.

 

Jordi Vandekerkhof applaudes his entire team, the core of which included More To Show USA CEO Othello Van Veerdegem; Sophie Raes, key client project manager in the EU; LA-based senior technical director Benjamin Van Brande and technical director Alex Van Brande; EU-based technical directors Kilian Delcorte and Michel Plusquin; and Joost Rombaut, technical designer in the EU.

 

Lighting

Lighting addressed a diversity of demands, for which Luc De Climmer thought laterally. Over 1,500 show lighting fixtures were used site-wide, including brands like Arri, Astera, Ayrton, Chauvet, Claypaky, Elation, GLP, Robe and more.

Most key production elements, including lighting, relied on being ground supported, resulting in the construction of six 16-meter-high technical towers each with a 3.5-meter diameter, which were strategically located either side of the road along the grandstand and the track.

Around twenty Ayrton lighting fixtures were rigged on each of the towers. Elation and GLP spot and wash moving lights were used at ground level running along the length of the autobahn track itself and on the floor under the grandstand, while Chauvet PXL Curves delineated the arches on the track space working with Arri SkyPanels in the ceiling.

Eight Vari-Lite VL3600s were used for manually follow spotting the cars as they whizzed along the road, running on a PRG GroundControl remote follow system. Astera Titan Tubes and LunaBulbs were dotted around, adding ambience to the food stall area, and Astera QuikPunches illuminated the car presentation areas.

Pyro was supplied by Pyrotecnico FX and included twelve Mega Mod single head liquid flame units and five Showven uFlamer II projectors, which were positioned on the bridge. On the autobahn sign were another six uFlamer IIs and eight Le Maitre Salamander Quad Pro flame units, with 96 flame canisters.

For Blink-182’s set, three trusses on an automation system descended from behind the autobahn sign which was suspended on a custom-designed ground support system devised by PRG. They were loaded with moving lights and strobes which had remained fully concealed up to this point to preserve the reveal. Additional floor lighting was swiftly moved onto the stage manually and some lighting from the nearest two towers was re-deployed to cover the stage.

Mood lighting covering the event areas included multi-layered patterns and gobo texturing with projections inspired by the tunnel wall designs. As the show cars departed through the grandstand and headed down the autobahn, multiple beams of light swept forward onto the track, while others elevated to form a dramatic “spire of light” in the sky. Simultaneously, the GLP JDC1s illuminated the cars from the sides with steady sheets of white light.

Event lighting was controlled via two GrandMA3 Full-Size consoles, with another Full-Size in the pre-viz studio, plus a GrandMA3 Light used as a mobile tech desk during the build and focus. Blink-182 brought their own operator.

Pre-viz was completed in two locations rather than More To Show’s LA office. Ombre pre-programmed the lighting using Depence in Belgium, then De Climmer moved to a pre-viz suite on the site.

All lighting equipment was supplied by PRG’s Los Angeles shop. The technical towers, autobahn sign gantry and grandstand were designed and supplied by structural engineering specialists Accurate Staging. PRG then integrated all their technical systems into these elements.

 

Video

The centerpiece and signature of the whole production, defining the event’s look and mission statements, was the 15 meters wide by 5 meters high autobahn screen, which was constructed from ROE Visual Vanish V4ST product, driven by Brompton Tessera processors.

It was installed approximately eight meters above ground level on a custom ground support system, and the cars whizzed underneath as they exited the tunnel and tore down the track.

The content displayed was created by the client, and it reinforced key Mercedes performance messaging as well as recreating the distinctive visual ambience of Germany’s famous motorways.

For the launch presentation, the screen was also fully utilized, showing bespoke motion graphics, cinematic brand content and some synchronized show visuals.

After the official reveal and car track demonstrations, the screen transitioned into an eye-catching backdrop for Blink-182’s content, and the three trusses which had been hidden behind it until that point, were flown in to fill the gap upstage. This setup remained in place for the after-show DJ/VJ.

Jo Pauly of Visual Solutions worked as More To Show’s head of video for this project, finessing the vast task of co-ordinating all video-related production aspects, ensuring smooth integration between media playback, live cameras and show cueing and working alongside the Mercedes creative team.

The LED system design, engineering, rigging and on-site infrastructure was also delivered by PRG Los Angeles.

The playback system comprised Disguise VX4 media servers supplied by By-Lex GmbH, programmed for native pixel-to-pixel playback of all the show media in a full 10-bit workflow.

A Barco E2 image processor managed all the live camera feeds, providing low-latency processing and unified switching between IMAG and playback content. This allowed the live video, directed by Mark Achterberg, to be dovetailed into the show and synched with the car presentation and vehicle reveals.

The camera package came from ComSat Media GmbH (Germany), with live camera feeds from seven Sony UHD cameras - in fixed and mobile locations around various parts of the site - together with two drones and three POV cameras.

Car cams were used to beam real-time footage of the vehicles traversing the tunnel and moving along the bridge, complete with an EVS system to provide instant replays during the show and presentation segments.

 

Audio

The sound department had to deal with spoken word for the presentation, sound effects - the car is electric but has some special audiological features evoking the spirit of engine power - and Blink-182’s music performance.

Peter Philips of Mono was the event sound designer, and he worked closely with Douglas Plander, technical product manager for audio at PRG, who designed a substantial Meyer Sound PA system. Anthony Narciso dealt with the spatial rendering and programmed the TiMax system.

Speaker arrays - a combination of Meyer Sound Leo, Lyon, Leopard and 1100-LFC subs with X40 and UPJ fills - were hung from the six technical towers, focused to cover the different zones.

The main PA system comprised left and right Leo arrays flown either side of the autobahn sign with two delay hangs of Leopard positioned on the sloping part of the grandstand.

There was also plenty of ground stacked PA, including LFE (low-frequency effects) sub arrays underneath the grandstand for delivering cinematic audio during the big reveal.

For immersive sound related to the car movement down the track, four additional rear-firing Leopard speaker arrays were rigged to the grandstand structure, with another ground-stacked array positioned fifty meters further down the bridge. These offered guests an authentic aural/kinetic impression as the cars roared out the tunnel and zoomed along the track.

A TiMax SoundHub was utilized to route audio to the correct speaker arrays at the designated times for the ultimate reproduction, a precision process using sound recorded during rehearsal drives. This was fed into the TiMax, which calculated the correct positioning and movement across the speaker arrays in real-time during the show.

Another experiential audio conundrum was that the car is electric, but simulated sounds, including gear shifts, replicate the characteristics of a real V8 engine. These are played inside the car and externally via specialized exterior speakers to mimic the feel of traditional performance vehicles.

This in-car audio needed to be mixed into the event PA and spatialized for the audience in the grandstand as the cars sped underneath them, which involved several meetings between More To Show’s audio team and Mercedes-AMG engineers.

The client specifically wanted the drivers to be able to “rev” the cars and engage in random burnouts, so prerecording was not an option.

The audio team tapped into the car’s onboard sound system to access the real-time generated sounds, which were beamed via RF to multiple antennas connected via the site-wide fiber network which included the full length of the track. From there, they were integrated and mixed into the PA system outputs.

As these brand-new cars needed to stay hidden for as long as possible, they only arrived on site the day of the event, so this feat of audiological nerdery was achieved with just a single test run.

All sound was mixed via a DiGiCo SD12 console. Blink-182 rocked up with their own touring control and monitor system and connected to the event’s racks-and-stacks.

 

(Photos: Brianna Doyon/Lauren Kim/Mercedes-Benz AG)

 

www.moretoshow.com

 

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