I'm thinking back to a time, a decade ago, where we here in my little town were visited by an incredible array of international visitors.
In 1994, when the announcement was made that Salt Lake City would be hosting the Winter Olympics, I watched the news and thought to myself "That's going to be a lot of work. I want a piece of it."
I spent the next several years doing things that prepared me to work somewhere on the production crews for the events, but I had no idea exactly in what position.
In January of 2001 a friend approached me about forming a new corporation to do production work. We had worked together at another couple of production companies around town, I respected the guy and felt like this might be a good thing to do for a while.
So we started us a new little company and started doing a few gigs around town for a couple of customers.
Things were going along great, we had a relationship with an event producer who was closely tied to the Governor's office. We were working along, designing a killer 'Welcome to Utah' type event, tied with the arrival of the Olympic torch to Salt Lake City and the arrival of a number of dignitaries, including Presidents of several countries and ambassadors from a bunch more.
I'm thinking that my Non-Disclosure Agreement has finally expired, so I can make public the designs for said event:
It was shaping up to be the adventure of a lifetime.
Then 9/11 happened. Everything got more difficult and expensive. We had already begun background checks. They tripled in difficulty.
The big welcome event was eventually cancelled. Secret Service determined that El Presidente was not to be on the steps of the State Capitol building.
We did end up doing a smaller presidential event inside a building.
For the same client, we ended up doing the VIP hospitality suite near the Medals Plaza, where we hosted heads of state, entertainers, athletes, media and a whole bunch of wannabe VIPs. Over the span of a week, installing sound, lighting and video systems, I crawled through the basement(s), attics, utility access holes and tunnels (yes, it's true) of this building. The other thing, it's haunted. Very very haunted.
Word to the wise: don't go in a bathroom right after Katie Couric...
Another client was AT&T, who had a large marketing tent in a parking lot. I spent several days of my life under this tent chiseling frozen cable out of the ice. (Cable gets warm when it has electricity running through it- then melting nicely down into the ice) Glamorous indeed.
Monster.com created a giant snow maze in Park City. We spent 2 months planning the lighting and sound systems, dealing with ridiculous city ordinances and permits and regulation. It turned out OK.
Another client hooked us up with a sweet gig:
Projection for the closing ceremonies.
We spent 2 weeks building projection towers above the stadium, visible in this picture as the white-shrouded elements on the roof.
The projectors were 12x12,000 watt Pani Projectors- a fairly old technology, basically a big filmstrip projector (although computer controlled and super cool)
Watching Moby soundcheck 2 songs for 4 hours. We (the crew and I) snuck down into the stands, right by his stage. at the end of every song, we would clap and scream loudly, making Mr. Melville blush and giggle. After a couple times of this, he was actively playing with us, watching us, making jokes and laughing though the endless camera rehearsals. A good time.
I learned that Gloria Estefan, Harry Connick Jr., Christina Aguilera, Bon Jovi and Kiss all lip-sync their TV performances.
Waited in a security line with Ms. Aguilera and her beefcake bouncer.
Rode an elevator with Mr. Connick Jr.
Sat in a meeting with Rudy Guiliani
Defaced KISS's stage with the words "KISS SUCKS" with all the "S" shapes in the lightning bolt shape. On the floor right in front of Gene Simmons.
So the real reason we were there was to do the projection for the show. How big was our screen you ask?
Ever been on a football field? Yeah. Bigger than that.
We unveiled the logo for the Torino Winter games in 2006.
Here are some pictures of the projections:
And a video courtesy of YouTube:
And some sage words from my friend and co-worker John Chapman, talking about a long night and a 1 mile walk.
The picture displays the scenario described:
The first 60 or 70 feet weren’t bad at all. By the time we reached the shop, we were trading arms and shoulders every thirty paces. The last park we walked through was, until recently, a gathering place for the homeless crowd. I _never_ imagined myself walking through it at night, much less at 1 am. Much less with a light show bouncing between the both of us. Somewhere, there are a few pictures of that night.
One last story:
One of our clients for the month was the Italian group that will host the next set of games. We spent a few days building three projector towers on top of the stadium. Each tower had around 7K pounds of concrete blocks on the base, to provide stability. Getting all those rocks from bottom to top was a project all by itself. Getting them from top to bottom was much more...amusing.
Anyway, the roof slopes down to the center, and is peppered with storm drains. One of our guys was cleaning up the space and found a 2 gallon cooler full of hot cocoa - the kind made with milk. It had looong since expired, so he poured it down the drain.
A few minutes later, a union light guy burst through the elevator door, seething with anger and firmly convinced that he’d been “*#$%&*^$% puked on.”
It turns out that the storm drains don’t make it all the way to the bottom of the building. Rather, they go down a few floors, then turn _in_ to the stadium. Unfortunately, this guy was clinging to a lighting truss with both hands and all ten toes when it happened.
I hope the statute of limitations has looong since expired....
So what did this 10 week experience give me?
It saved my company in the post-9/11 world from certain failure. All over the country, companies were failing- but in SLC, everyone was boosted by the injection of extra work.
Personally I was able to pay off enough debt that I bought a house. And three other people on my crew were able to do the same...
