132 VENUE RESORTS WORLD SENTOSA Asia Universal Studios theme park, the world’s biggest oceanarium, Sentosa island, singapore Marina Park Life, six hotels, a casino, shopping, eating and drinking asia/pacific/oceania outlets, meeting facilities to accommodate 12,000 delegates, and the 1,600-capacity Festive Grand Theatre, looks to be money Contrary to what appears to have been a worldwide recession over well spent. This is a long-term investment for Singapore and will recent months, there are some pockets of the world where cash encourage tourism for years to come, especially with the project flow doesn’t seem to be such an issue. continuing to grow and expand over time. In Singapore for example, Resorts World Sentosa, located on Such as vast project spells an arms length list, and more, when Sentosa Island, opened its doors in March earlier this year after it comes to designers, contractors, installers, technicians and spending a staggering 4.32 billion US dollars building the resort. specialists, and for that reason, much of the AV design can However, to its merit, encompassing the first and only South East be described as turnkey solutions. With such a wide spread of www.mondodr.com VENUE 133 Photos: Resorts World at Sentosa Pte Ltd applications to cater for, it is not surprising that some aspects an open slate, within the requirements of a budget and with the required individual vendors to build and manage each attraction understanding of how we needed to operate the venue, we then RESORTS WORLD separately. designed the equipment to accommodate for all that. But in all the Walking through Universal Studios feels like you’ve been sucked designs we’ve had, the biggest choice factor was reliability, and into another world. Split into seven zones - Jurassic Park The ability to re-create in high repetition, we’re doing eight and nine Lost World, Far Far Away, New York, Sci-Fi City, Hollywood, high quality shows a day, repeatibley, and that’s not an easy thing to Madagascar and Ancient Egypt - the park will be home to 24 rides achieve.” in total, although not all are fully complete yet. Besides the rides, Chippy called upon one of the resort’s major contractors Electro SENTOSA Universal Studios also includes a number of eateries, each indicative Acoustics Systems (EAS) and they were asked to design and of the area they feature in, and performance spaces ‘on the streets’, put together a package that catered for sound reinforcement, which feature daily dramatic plays or musical skits. Renkus-Heinz video projection and camera systems, production intercom, show cabinets provide the audio system for the background music as controller and stage lighting systems. The venue consists of a FOH visitors walking along the streets, through each of the zones. Each loudspeaker system using three stacks of line array arranged in left/ area of the theme park also has its own illumination, based on centre / right configuration followed by a series of effect speakers animated playful lighting effects combined with theatrical tones to at the sides. The QSC ILA line array system was chosen because create the desired ambiance, the lighting design for these areas was it is compact and lightweight, which suits the size and structure completed by Light Cibles. criteria well for Hollywood Theater. QSC AD-S52 speakers were A major attraction in the depth of Universal Studios is the 1,500- installed for the front-fills and AD-S82 speakers for side effects, capacity Pantages Hollywood Theater. Bruce Chipman (Chippy) while a Q-Sys integrated system platform provides all the audio Assistant Director for Entertainment Technical at Universal said routing, processing, control and monitoring necessary for the kit. when it came to the design process: “The Hollywood Theater was The audio set-up needed to be flexible, as even with a long running www.mondodr.com 134 VENUE WaterWorld show at the Hollywood Theater, there is still the potential to have meant we could get the fixtures quickly and we had support on our another changeable show running in the evening, so it is more than doorstep.” These were coupled with Vari-Lite fixtures, supplied by likely that at least two different shows will be running at the theatre WhiteLight Ltd, which can be controlled using the in house MA at any one time. And with such a hectic work schedule throughout Lighting grandMA console, plus dimmers from ETC, four ESR48+ the daytime performances, operators needed to be able to switch to dimmer racks for stage lighting and two Unison DRd12 dimmer the evening programme, quickly and easily. To make that possible, racks with Paradigm control for houselights circuits. digital mixing consoles were selected for their versatility, and their Chippy continued: “I had to achieve [eight or nine high quality shows ability to reduce the amount of processing equipment, as they were a day] with a minimal crew, so I had to put systems in like Medialon, constrained by the size of the sound booth. A 48-channel Yamaha to do a lot of my show control handling to reduce numbers, PM5D for the FOH and a Yamaha M7CL for the monitoring console otherwise I’d need master of lighting, master electrician, board were chosen for the installation. operators, video switchers. So I saved the wages of four of five For the lighting aspect, Lenna Minion, an independent Lighting positions by programming the show, that’s great for our built shows Consultant was on hand to liase with suppliers, access the support because it gives me that reliability and cuts down my crew numbers, on offer, and put forward suggestions for the best lighting solutions and it also gives me that ability for the second show to come in at in each key area of the resort. For the moving head fixtures, Martin night to still have all those positions because all of that infrastructure Professional was selected as the preferred choice. Chippy said: still exists and can run as Medialon or it can run as standalone. “We chose Martin Professional because they were the only moving We’ve tried to find the compromise between efficiency, repeatiblility, head manufacturer who have an office here in Singapore, which 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 www.mondodr.com VENUE 135 Pantages Hollywood Theater 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.