RESORTS WORLD SENTOSA

Contrary to what appears to have been a worldwide recession over recent months, there are some pockets of the world where cash flow doesn’t seem to be such an issue. In Singapore for example, Resorts World Sentosa, located on Sentosa Island, opened its doors in March earlier this year after spending a staggering 4.32 billion US dollars building the resort. However, to its merit, encompassing the first and only South East

Asia Universal Studios theme park, the world’s biggest oceanarium, Marina Park Life, six hotels, a casino, shopping, eating and drinking outlets, meeting facilities to accommodate 12,000 delegates, and the 1,600-capacity Festive Grand Theatre, looks to be money well spent. This is a long-term investment for Singapore and will encourage tourism for years to come, especially with the project continuing to grow and expand over time. Such as vast project spells an arms length list, and more, when it comes to designers, contractors, installers, technicians and specialists, and for that reason, much of the AV design can be described as turnkey solutions. With such a wide spread of

Sentosa island, singaporeasia/pacific/oceania

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RESORTS WORLD SENTOSA

applications to cater for, it is not surprising that some aspects required individual vendors to build and manage each attraction separately. Walking through Universal Studios feels like you’ve been sucked into another world. Split into seven zones - Jurassic Park The Lost World, Far Far Away, New York, Sci-Fi City, Hollywood, Madagascar and Ancient Egypt - the park will be home to 24 rides in total, although not all are fully complete yet. Besides the rides, Universal Studios also includes a number of eateries, each indicative of the area they feature in, and performance spaces ‘on the streets’, which feature daily dramatic plays or musical skits. Renkus-Heinz cabinets provide the audio system for the background music as visitors walking along the streets, through each of the zones. Each area of the theme park also has its own illumination, based on animated playful lighting effects combined with theatrical tones to create the desired ambiance, the lighting design for these areas was completed by Light Cibles. A major attraction in the depth of Universal Studios is the 1,500-capacity Pantages Hollywood Theater. Bruce Chipman (Chippy) Assistant Director for Entertainment Technical at Universal said when it came to the design process: “The Hollywood Theater was

an open slate, within the requirements of a budget and with the understanding of how we needed to operate the venue, we then designed the equipment to accommodate for all that. But in all the designs we’ve had, the biggest choice factor was reliability, and ability to re-create in high repetition, we’re doing eight and nine high quality shows a day, repeatibley, and that’s not an easy thing to achieve.” Chippy called upon one of the resort’s major contractors Electro Acoustics Systems (EAS) and they were asked to design and put together a package that catered for sound reinforcement, video projection and camera systems, production intercom, show controller and stage lighting systems. The venue consists of a FOH loudspeaker system using three stacks of line array arranged in left/centre / right configuration followed by a series of effect speakers at the sides. The QSC ILA line array system was chosen because it is compact and lightweight, which suits the size and structure criteria well for Hollywood Theater. QSC AD-S52 speakers were installed for the front-fills and AD-S82 speakers for side effects, while a Q-Sys integrated system platform provides all the audio routing, processing, control and monitoring necessary for the kit.The audio set-up needed to be flexible, as even with a long running

Photos: Resorts World at Sentosa Pte Ltd

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show at the Hollywood Theater, there is still the potential to have another changeable show running in the evening, so it is more than likely that at least two different shows will be running at the theatre at any one time. And with such a hectic work schedule throughout the daytime performances, operators needed to be able to switch to the evening programme, quickly and easily. To make that possible, digital mixing consoles were selected for their versatility, and their ability to reduce the amount of processing equipment, as they were constrained by the size of the sound booth. A 48-channel Yamaha PM5D for the FOH and a Yamaha M7CL for the monitoring console were chosen for the installation.For the lighting aspect, Lenna Minion, an independent Lighting Consultant was on hand to liase with suppliers, access the support on offer, and put forward suggestions for the best lighting solutions in each key area of the resort. For the moving head fixtures, Martin Professional was selected as the preferred choice. Chippy said: “We chose Martin Professional because they were the only moving head manufacturer who have an office here in Singapore, which

meant we could get the fixtures quickly and we had support on our doorstep.” These were coupled with Vari-Lite fixtures, supplied by WhiteLight Ltd, which can be controlled using the in house MA Lighting grandMA console, plus dimmers from ETC, four ESR48+ dimmer racks for stage lighting and two Unison DRd12 dimmer racks with Paradigm control for houselights circuits. Chippy continued: “I had to achieve [eight or nine high quality shows a day] with a minimal crew, so I had to put systems in like Medialon, to do a lot of my show control handling to reduce numbers, otherwise I’d need master of lighting, master electrician, board operators, video switchers. So I saved the wages of four of five positions by programming the show, that’s great for our built shows because it gives me that reliability and cuts down my crew numbers, and it also gives me that ability for the second show to come in at night to still have all those positions because all of that infrastructure still exists and can run as Medialon or it can run as standalone. We’ve tried to find the compromise between efficiency, repeatiblility, quality.”Another popular attraction amongst the Universal Studios template is WaterWorld, and having completed a very similar installation for this attraction in previous Universals in the US and Japan, the fit out for Singapore was more of an extension of what already exists. As Chippy explained: “For WaterWorld where it was a known show, the venue itself, it is different, it’s bigger, and it’s the biggest of the three, but there are elements that have been changed because they didn’t work in the other venues, but really it’s a hybrid of the other two venues. So it was a known quantity, the controls, the drawings everything else was essentially a lift of the Japan design, and it was put in here and updated where necessary to accommodate for the new technology.”A big technical challenge at WaterWorld cames in the form of sightline issues, and the fact that conventional box speakers blocked audiences’ view at certain angles, and this was backed up by a second altercation of poor sound coverage for the audience members sitting in the first few rows, which came to light during the design and testing process. The solution was to opt for Renkus-Heinz digital steerable loudspeaker, IC-Live, as it is slim and can be mounted straight onto a structure without physical

WaterWorld

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tilting. Using software, EAS was able to customise beams to optimise the coverage within the audience area, while minimising the sound energy from directing onto the reflective metal walls surrounding the set. The second issue was overcome using front-fill loudspeakers to supplement the mains. In addition, several enhancements were added to the system, including preview monitors behind the backstage area to enable stage hands to see what’s going on at FOH; a more powerful digital signal processor, QSC Q-Sys, to process the entire venue’s 46 inputs and 51 outputs. The Q-Sys is a unique processor unlike other, and at WaterWorld it handles BOH paging, playback of pre-recorder announcement, surround panning and all audio feeds processing with minimum latency. The show itself at WaterWorld is a spectacular display of professional stunts and pyrotechnics, and there is a lot of time and effort goes into each and every performance. The sensor system and operation is hugely complex. There are under water cameras, and all enabling buttons are pressed by people rather than automatic machinery to ensure complete safety. WaterWorld puts on up to eight performance per day, with about 90 minutes gaps in between, and that’s how long it takes to re-set the venue so it is a conveyor belt, meaning the technology is constantly being pushed its limit. Living up to the expectation of an existing success story is no easy task, and within any project there are compromises and changes to make along the way, as Chippy explained: “I’ve never had a venue built the way I wanted from day one, so we have to work within constraints and continue to work with those constraints, and as we remodel and fix things over time we engineer out the problems. We won’t be finished building for five years, we’ll always be changing, we’ll always be modifying because right now we’re trying to understand what the shows are. We’ve essentially been open three or four months. Solutions are presenting themselves, and things that have never been a problem, you’ll walk in one day and go ‘how the hell did that happen?’ So until we understand the rhythm and the life of the venue, and every venue is a living thing, until we understand what that is and know what that is we just have to deal with it everyday. I have a very good friend who says ‘we don’t have problems, we just have solutions to opportunities’ and that’s what we do, we have solutions to opportunities.”Over in Central Zone, as it is commonly known, which includes the

Pantages Hollywood Theater

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casino, the hotels, the shopping areas, the ballroom and meeting rooms, and the Festive Grand Theatre there is also an array of technology waiting to greet the visitors and treat them to an incredible experience that they’ll never forget. The key player at the Festive Grand Theatre is Matthew Twist, who originally started out as Technical Producer on Voyage de la Vie, the theatre’s resident show. Because the show had already been commissioned to run at the Festive Grand, the theatre was very much built around the needs of Voyage de la Vie. Matthew shed light on the initial process: “When it was originally conceived, the show was going to have a lot of big classic illusions and you need a rather specific environment to be able to achieve that; the right lighting angles, a very dark venue as you don’t want light bleeding. So the ID is actually designed by Michael Grade Associates (a famous American architect) who had to bring the theatrical needs to the fore in that design: the colour of the wood, the colour of the seats, and the fabric around the ceiling all changed to accommodate the needs of the show. The sub stage that goes down to basement five, which I believe is the deepest part of the property, was again a show requirement, to be able to store all the machinery. For us to be able to store all the equipment, we needed high speed lifts, whilst still enabling us to bring things up from the sub stage level four.”Next the Festive Grand needed to draft in some theatre specialists, and after laying out the requirements to Theatre Projects Consultants, in terms of lighting, audio and video, they came back

with a series of options, describing how they could be achieved, and then the best option for the job was selected. Matthew continued: “One original concept for the show was to use LED instead of projection but the requirement for high definition on a 20-metre screen, was going to cost in the region of six million Singapore dollars. So the option of going back to edge blending projectors and a projection screen was a no brainer. However, we have the capacity to integrate an LED wall in the future should we need to. All of the designs, including the Festive Grand Theatre and the Ballroom, are designed around key concepts of flexible space, so although we’re building this venue for this show, there are surplus tie lines, be it copper based, Ethernet based, fibre optics based, there are multiple redundancies to allow us to bring in other shows over the top and a couple of years down the line when we swap out the show, there’s enough flexibility for us to produce the second show.”WhiteLight Ltd were selected as the main supplier and installer of sound, light and video equipment at the Festive Grand, and the team was headed up by MD Bryan Raven who oversaw the project from the London office. He worked closely with Ptmaigan Consulting from Hong Kong, who acted as the project managers, the team was headed by Simon Fraser, along with Alan Chambers and Dan Harvey, and completing the line up were Bob Barbagallo and Mario St Onge of Solotech Inc from Canada who were the sound and video partners on the project. While dimming and electrical installation was once again taken care of by local form EAS.

Entrance to the Festive Grand Theatre

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The main sound system installed at the Festive Grand Theatre is Meyer Sound, which comprises 22 MICA line arrays positioned on either side of the main stage, six JM-1P’s to make up the centre array, eight UPM-1P’s for frontfills, and a combination of 14 subwoofers. The speakers are processed via two Meyer Sound Gallieo systems and an LCD Cue console, plus there’s a DiGiCo SD7 console for back-up. Matthew was particularly pleased with the Cue console, as he expressed: “There is nothing else like the Cue console, there is another way to run a show like that, using a combination of Medialon and X48’s, you can achieve pretty much the same effect. Don’t think of the LCD as a console, think of it as a system that plays the audio, and controls, and runs show control, and presents a series of faders which may be grouped or sub-masters, or auxs or inputs or fader channels or whatever else you’ve programmed to it that day, or that moment, so it’s a total audio show control system, and there’s nobody else that makes anything else like it, and if you’ve got a need for a Cue console then the Cue console is the only equipment that will do it.”The lighting at the Festive Grand followed suit with some of the other

spaces around the resort. The resort wide decision was to go with ETC as the supplier of lighting fixtures and dimmers, and the theatre conformed to that. The production lighting equipment comprises of 14 ETC ESR36+ dimmer racks located in two dimmer rooms provide dimming and control of power to worklight, houselight and lighting equipment. Over 400 of 3KW and 100 of 5KW dimmer modules are installed for the entire stage and house lighting systems, and a dedicated Gigabit Lighting LAN is provided for all network enable production lighting equipment including wireless access points. In addition to this there are more fixtures from ETC in the form of the Source Four profiles, Robert Juliat zoom profiles, ADB tungsten frensel fixtures that make up the theatrical lighting luminaries, while the automated luminaires are provided by Martin Professional – 20 Mac III’s, 10 MAC 2000E Performance II’s, 13 MAC 2000E Wash XB’s, 15 MAC 700 Profile’s and three MAC 700 Washes, all of which are controlled using a MA Lighting grandMA console, with a MA2 Ultralight for back-up. The visual element in the theatre is delivered by two Barco FLM R22+ projectors and a Green Hippo Hippotizer media server.

The Ballroom has a 7,300-capacity and the space can be split into nine different zones if there is more than one function taking place at a given time. As the Ballroom has a 51dB maximum sound level, the dividing walls create

columns so the sound cannot leak into other zones. Sound control is provided by a Yamaha LS9 for the small events, an MC7 for the mid-scale events, and a PM5D for the larger. While on the lighting side either a MA lighting Ultralite, or

a grandMA is used. The AV design for the Ballroom was taken care of by Theatre Projects Consultants.

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TECHNICAL INFORMATION

FESTIVE GRAND THEATRESOUND: 122 x Meyer Sound Mica line array speaker; 6 x Meyer Sound JM-1P line array speaker; 12 x Meyer Sound UPM-1P loudspeaker; 2 x Meyer Sound MSL-4 loudspeaker; 6 x Meyer Sound 700-HP subwoofer; 4 x Meyer Sound 600-HP subwoofer; 4 x Meyer Sound USW-1P subwoofer; 2 x Meyer Sound USM-100P stage monitor; 8 x Meyer Sound UPJ-1P stage monitor; 20 x Meyer Sound HMS-10 cinema surround; 2 x Meyer Sound Gallieo processor; 1 x Meyer Sound RMS software; 1 x Meyer Sound Cue console; 4 x Genelec 8030A monitor; 4 x Genelec 8040A monitor; 1 x DiGiCo SD7 mixing console; 1 x TC Electronic System 6000 processor; 2 x Tascam X-48 track digital audio workstation

LIGHTING: 20 x Martin MAC III; 10 x Martin MAC2000E Performance II; 13 x Martin MAC 2000E Wash XB; 15 x Martin MAC 700 Profile; and 3 x Martin MAC 700 Wash; 1 x MA Lighting grandMA2 Light console; 1 x MA Lighting grandMA2 Ultralight console; 104 ETC Source Four UL version luminaire; 94 x ETC Source Four zoom 15-30 UL profile; 23 x Robert Juliat 611 SX 11/26 zoom profile; 3 x Robert Juliat 1149 Super Korrigan followspot; 10 x Selecon Aclaim Fresnel; 14 x Selecon Lui; 17 x ADB F101 Europe Fresnel; 24 x ADB C203 Europe Prism-Convex; 66 x Kupo Par 64 1kw (CP62); 31 x Kupo Par 64 1kw (CP60); 16 x Kupo Par 64 1kw (ACL); 10 x James Thomas Par 16 75W; 8 x Tourmate Split line SPL161NEBYYBLK; 2 x Reich & Vogel 1kw Beamlight followspot; 4 x Look Solutions Cryo Fog; 2 x MDG Atmosphere Touring haze machineCritter media server

VIDEO: 1 x Harkness Screens 16m x 9m rear projection screen; 2 x Barco FLM R22+ projector; 1 x Green Hippo Hippotizer media server

www.rwsentosa.com

Coordinating this resort has been a huge challenge, but both Chippy and Matthew are pleased with the outcome. They describe the opening of RWS as a birthing moment, there’s been blood, sweat and tears, heart and soul gone into this project and when it all comes together it’s a magical feeling. Chippy concluded by praising the whole of his team for their hard work and effort, but also has a special mention for a particular person: “It has to be Skip, the one person for me who has, to put it politically correct, kept smiling through it all, has probably been the greatest motivator, wealth of knowledge, wealth of calmness, and wealth of rationality has been Skip Sherman. He’s a consultant working for the entertainment department (on the Universal side), there’s nothing on this project that he hasn’t been involved in and we wouldn’t have succeeded as well as we have without his help.”

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