Burj Khalifa Light Show to Continue Until March 31
ECA2,a leading creator of high-quality multimedia shows, was chosen to design and produce a stunning laser and light show for Dubai's Burj Khalifa, with the goal of creating a show like no other for New Year's Eve and beyond – one that would leave the audience speechless.
The company rose to the challenge, designing a memorable multimedia celebration in a remarkably short period of time, with just two months of installation. During the course of the project, the team needed to reinvent several technical aspects to achieve the result they wanted, including coordinating the choreography with the nearby Dubai Fountain.
A celebration fit for a milestone moment
The United Arab Emirate celebrated its 50th birthday in 2021, so the organisers wanted to close the year with a spectacular show at the world's tallest building.
This was the first show of this scale to be produced at the Burj Khalifa. It is the world's most powerful laser show to date, with the skytracer, beam lights, and laser projectors adding up to 372 k.W.
Speaking about the project, Jean-Christophe Canizarès, Chairman and CEO of ECA2 says:
"For several years we have been studying and working with Emaar on how the Burj Khalifa Tower can interact with its surroundings, thus creating an additional Dubai Downtown experience. It was in the summer of last year that the idea of deploying such a setup and revealing it for the first time at the New Year Event came to the discussions."
"We were absolutely thrilled to be entrusted for this light & laser show, moreover within the context of the 50th UAE Anniversary, finally able to really think outside of the box and propose something never seen before."
Rising to the challenge
One of the first challenges was the design of the iconic building itself, rising 830 metres into the sky with steep surfaces. ECA2 needed to plan every detail, from where to place the lights to how to ensure they were installed safely by the technicians. Safe distances also needed to be calculated for the fireworks, as well as making sure that these were coordinated with the lights and lasers accurately.
All this meant that the project called for the highest level of accuracy and technical sophistication, as Canizarès explains:
"This project has been a great challenge from the start. The highest building in the world, a very short timeline and the largest span of multimedia equipment ever rigged on the tower. It represented a huge team to deploy and the coordination of a large number of entities for which this was a first as well.
"Realising the interaction of the lasers and the fountain is a good example of this. When the final setup had been validated, we had exactly 2 months to install, deploy, test and encode the show! We are talking about the most powerful laser show ever, with more than 60 km of cable, over 334 fixtures and 310 specifically designed and tested brackets rigged on the facade.
"A crew of over 110 people has been deployed on very short notice to fulfil that task of delivering a show on the world's tallest building within an NYE specifically timed show. We decided to deploy two previews and rendering studios which enabled us to adjust the complete show (with all effects) within a photorealistic CGI sequence that would perfectly match the on-site reality."
The world's most powerful laser show
The show was a hit on New Year's Eve and will now run as a semi-permanent light and laser show until 31 March 2022. The NYE spectacular, which took five weeks to install and seven weeks of on-site production, ran for 11 minutes. The semi-permanent show features six specially designed programs of four minutes.
In total, the project includes more than 60 kilometres of cables, 334 fixtures, 310 specifically designed and tested brackets rigged on the facade, eight GrandMa lightning desks and two virtual programming studios, creating the world's most powerful laser show.
"We are grateful for this opportunity and happy to have risen to the challenge, effectively paving the way for the reinvention of NYE events, wishing to offer more and to put storytelling back at the heart of the process," adds Canizarès.
Previously, the company hastransformed the Chinese myth of Pan Gu into an immersive experience for a theatre in Hekou Village in Lanzhou, China, using state of the art technology to bring the story to life for a modern audience.
Images by Ralph Larmann
Source: https://blooloop.com/technology/news/eca2-laser-light-show-burj-khalifa/
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