Mentioning last year's G20 Summit symphonic concert ‘Enduring Memories of Hangzhou’, you may still remember the stunning water ballet ‘Swan Lake’, a dream-like fan, which amazed the global audience. In Chengdu in March of the sunny spring, at the 2017 CSMPTE Film and Television Technology Exchange Seminar, Sha Xiaolan, the chief producer of ‘Enduring Memories of Hangzhou’and renowned Chinese lighting designer, explained in detail the behind-the-scenes production details of this concert for nearly 300 professionals in the field of film and television lighting and production.

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In accordance with the theme of the summit, the creative team fully demonstrated artistic creativity and combined modern performing arts technology such as scenography, lighting, sound, projection, video, stage machinery and aerial system with the performance to create a live symphonic concert that fully reflected the‘ West Lake elements, Hangzhou characteristics, Jiangnan flavor, Chinese style and beyond’.

This time Sha Xiaolan was the chief producer instead of his previous role as chief lighting designer and chief visual designer. He had to take the overall control, not only to control the design effect and quality of the lighting part, but also to master the progress and quality of all departments of the performance.

Sha Xiaolan at the seminar

Almost all of the nine programs in this concert were taken from famous Chinese and foreign songs. Sha Xiaolan highlighted the creative ideas and the realization process of four programs – ‘Blossoms on a Moonlit River in Spring’, ‘Swan Lake’, ‘the Beautiful Love Legend’ and ‘Moonlight’.

Moonlight

The moon is a very important element of the concert. In ‘Blossoms on a Moonlit River in Spring’, the ‘moon’ had to be raised to more than 50 meters, and it was not possible to use mechanical devices to avoid bloopers. The creative team later decided to use an 8-meter diameter artificial inflatable sphere to hang high above the West Lake; the pattern was projected using eight large projectors. Two main challenges were overcome here: firstly, the site was chosen carefully because the trees on the shore were very tall; secondly, the sphere was affected by the wind and would swing with the wind, so the area of the projected image had to be larger than the ‘moon’.

‘Swan Lake’

The creative realization of ‘Swan Lake’is quite twisted. Initially, the creative team designed an aerial system plus flying lamp program, requiring the dancers to ‘fly’ from the outer lake into the West Lake stage with synchronized lighting. To this end, the partner Haoyang electronics conducted numerous R&D tests to develope a ‘mobile power + wireless control of the flight system’ as the characteristics of the flying lamp system. However, this proposal was abandoned because strict restrictions on the World Heritage Site West Lake (this ‘flying lamp’ idea was partly embodied in this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala Guilin branch). Then the creative team came up with a second proposal - a combination of actors and virtual interactive performance. This is also the first time ever that ‘Swan Lake’ is performed on a real lake; at the same time, the use of Pepper's ghost technology in the natural environment on the water is also a pivotal attempt. In ‘Swan Lake’, the light reflection effect generated by the water of West Lake was fully utilized. The light was accurately projected on the ballerinas, which then produced a reflection effect, together with the image reflection produced by the holographic film, superimposed into a water ripple effect, the perfect visual effect was amazing.

‘the Beautiful Love Legend’

‘The Beautiful Love Legend’ also makes comprehensive use of lighting reflection effects and projection technology. On the stage, a huge folding fan slowly opened with projection on it, forming a perfect circle of virtual and reality. The performance of Yue Opera and duet dance interpreted a beautiful love story. High luminous flux engineering projector superimposed projection to ensure the safety while also improving the overall brightness. The most important feature of the lighting in the show is that there is no backlighting, only side lighting is used.

Showcasing the elements with lighting

There is a detail in ‘Moonlight’ - the close-up light of the pianist's fingers hitting the keys when he performs. The image on the white piano was projected, giving the pianist's finger with close-up light. But since the chasing light is easy to produce shadows, the creative team set up a light strip inside the piano particularly to depict the details of the pianist's finger playing.

Beam light effect

Sha Xiaolan said, water and light are perfect pair. In this concert, we utilized lighting, virtual images and projection methods to integrate with the natural shadows of the West Lake to accomplish a harmonious show.

‘There was over 2000 units of lights in the show from major Chinese light manufacturers, which showcased the technological advancement of homemade lights.’ Sha Xiaolan added. The speech covered both creation and implementation of the show, which won a round applause from the audience.