European Capital of Culture 2016 / Opening Ceremony

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Introduction

I got the chance to work with tigrelab for Hansel Cereza on the opening ceremony of San Sebastián: European Capital of Culture 2016. It marked the beginning of the year of culture and was broadcasted live on La 2 de Televisión Española, Spain's national public television. The turnout was spectacular, with reports of 50.000-75.000 people present for the ceremony.

My job for this project was to design and conceive the closing part of the opening ceremony: a 5 minute multimedia show intended to replace the typical firework ending. It included pointer lights, tower lights, LEDs, screen projection, crowd filling lights and fire. All of this was carefully coordinated with the music and sound effects to enhance the experience ever more.

Project description

The talented director Hansel Cereza asked us to join him to create the visual contents and technical side for the Opening Ceremony of San Sebastian Capital of Culture 2016 that took place at the Maria Cristina bridge in January 2016.

For this macro event, we covered the 90m long bridge with 164 stripes of 4m long LED lights hanging over it (more than half kilometer). The LEDs were synchronized with the visuals being rear projected on 9 screens above them to create the “Bridge of Coexistence”. The video covered 672m2 of surface. Both sides of the river were mirrored.

For the closing of the ceremony we designed a multimedia show with composed music to replace the traditional fireworks closing. For this, we used over a 100 lights by the river side and synced them with the projection, LED lights and flamethrowers.

Credits

Project: Opening Ceremony for San Sebastian Capital of Culture 2016
Location: Maria Cristina Bridge, San Sebastian
Director of Ceremony: Hansel Cereza
Producer of Ceremony: Susana Jove

Multimedia project management, Design & Graphics: Tigrelab
Technical counseling: Tigrelab
Visuals: Tigrelab
Lighting Technician: Lluís Martí
AV Technicians: Eikonos
Leds Mapping: Proto-Pixel
Audio Multimedia Show: Summer 76
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Tigrelab Team:
Federico Gonzalez
Mathieu Felix
Javier Pinto
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Dan Garotte
Daniel Avila
Mery MPH
Albert Oriol
Xevi Polo
Filip Roca
Adolfo Redaño
Francesc de Riba
Raul Gras
Igor Arabaolaza

The images below correspond to the specific part of the opening ceremony that I worked on.

Image credit: tigrelab.com / 3D model and render: tigrelab.com