De-Rigging Begins. The show ended Thursday night. De-rigging began at 3.00am Friday morning. I arrived at 6:00am and this is what I saw. One side of the stage already had the facade removed. The video screens gone. The fake columns gone. The speakers gone. Additional lighting, gone. The control console gone. The lights on the roof gone. The fountains gone. The ice rinks gone. The chairs the people sat on gone. And hardly anyone about as they were all having breakfast.
The activity of the day was yet to begin in earnest - even though a lot had been done already - as the Labor Hire people were not in just yet and they had a hard day ahead.
Taking Down The Facade. If you have a look at the top of the image, where the walking platform is, you'll see something jutting out. The facade is attached by a cable to that piece, then the cable goes back down to the ground to the motor. These facades are lowed to the lower platform. Each side piece is removed and placed into special dollies on the top of a large scissor lift. Once the dollies are full they are lifted off of the scissor lift with a crane, and then the crane lifts an empty dollie into place to be filled again.
The facades - these ones - are made of aluminum and have a texture sprayed onto them. The facades that were placed Above the stage's roof were aluminum frame with a vinyl front cover which was attached to the frame by Velcro - so those frames can be used for other sets just by changing the pattern/picture on the vinyl.
Facade Almost All Down. While the scissor lift was taking down those facade pieces, the cranes were busy taking the others down. As well as beginning to take down the vertical pieces to which the facade panels were attached. As with the facade frames above the stage roof, the wall facades also come in joined segments. The crane lifts it to just above the ground. A dollie is rolled beneath it and then the frame lowered down. Once down on the dollie the crane keeps a hold while the bottom section is disconnected from the rest. The crane then slightly lifts the facade frame from the disconnected one and lowers again so the next piece can be disconnected. This is repeated for all facade frames. And the process goes fairly quick. Specially if you've got people who have done it before, haven't but have some other kind of Rigging Experience, or who are Switched On.
Still to remove before the roof can be seen to, is all the scaffolding on the stage - including the curved stairways. But the sturdy plastic squares have been removed from the grass area in the foreground to reveal the landscape cloth used to protect the surface where the grass had been.
Almost Roof Time. With the facade all gone and additional set frame work also removed and the stage scaffold gone, it's time to consider the main roof. And what happens here is... the cranes hook up to either side of the roof at the front and take their respective weight - they lift their section of roof until the crane's load indicator tells them they have the correct weight (which is the same weight they had when they were lifting the roof - 7,000kg). The electric motors at the back of the stage also take their weight. Then, with two climbers/riggers at each secured point, the securing pins are hammered out - if the cranes didn't take the correct weight, there could be one tonne of force - or more - pushing on the pins and they'd be impossible to hammer out.
Once the pins are out in all secure points around the roof and the roof is being suspended in the air by the cranes at the front and the motors at the back, the lowering procedures begins. This involves the front cranes lowering at the same speed to avoid the roof leaning to one side more than the other. It can take up to 15 minutes to lower the roof down.
You'll also notice, the landscape cloth has been removed as the groundsmen begin to ready the surface for new grass.
Roof Down. In this image the roof is Almost down. It is suspended around shoulder height so all the diagonal cross bracing can be removed and the trolleys put in place.
The trolleys rest on the stage and support the roof frame and keep it just off the stage. This allows the various sections to be disconnected from each other and still rest on a trolley. So they can then be wheeled out of the way. All trolleys are put into rough place. The roof is lowered to just inches above them and then their position is corrected before the roof is lowered completely.
While this is going on the other cranes keep removing set frame work. But this time, they try to remove it in larger sections so it can be disconnected on the ground.
Dark & Wet. Following the dismantling of the roof, which also involved the crane lifting bracing sections onto the ground for any one of the 16 forklifts to take away, additional high walkways and tower sections were taken down. Then stacked next to the field for moving later - moving to the other end where there was another crane lifting the sections into open-top shipping containers.
It also started to rain and there was a bit of lightening. So all High work was stopped and the cranes put their booms back in to avoid being hit by lightening. It was around 8:00pm - 14 hours after I arrived and time to call it a day.
A New Day Begins. Early the next morning a truck is dropping off an open-top shipping container, while tower sections and a stack of 9 base pads wait to be put into those containers. So far the de-rig has gone well - very well. And what was scheduled to take four days to do, looks like it'll be done in two days.
Obviously, it all needs to come down. But there are certain orders in which things need to happen. Such as, the frame work between the high towers needs to be lowered completely to the ground before anything is taking from those high towers - even pieces connected to the sides. To maintain structural strength all the time. And a constant vigilance must be paid to those who haven't done such work before in case they do something they Think needs doing but which could be Dangerous to do at that moment in time.
Walkways Come Down. When the walkways are taken down, they are taken down as a complete unit - handrails and all. Then placed onto the ground for the ground crew to dismantle and put scaffold pieces into their respective scaffold-stillages and for forklifts to take away the larger pieces to be put into containers.
Also in this image you'll notice in the background there is a person in the stands spreading out a large black cloth over the chairs - to dry from the night before. That cloth has been draped into strategic positions within the frame work - and some is still visible on the tower sections, such as beneath the climber wearing the red shirt and yellow helmet - to prevent light shining from behind the stage through gaps and into the audience.
Facing the camera in black singlet is Mayo. People were calling him Mario so he went with it and said he was Super Mario (whenever he needed a forklift he'd Yell Out "FORKLIFT" towards where the forklifts were parked waiting to be called upon). To the right with white helmet and red sleeveless top is Jimmy. Him and Super Mario are from Germany and are leading hands in charge of sections next to each other. And as the sections were coming down they used each others resources - crane and personnel - interchangeably.
Almost There. There are only a few tower sections to come down now. And so on the far side, one crane has also started putting pieces into shipping containers, as well as a crane to the right of the camera which cannot be seen. The other crane which had helped lower the roof has moved into the Boneyard to start putting stuff into containers there as well. And the near side crane is just lifting its last tower section before it will also start lifting items into containers.
The visible crane on the right of picture will take down the remaining tower sections in three picks - one for the platform and one for each tower with the tower then taken apart on the ground. It will then come towards the camera to pick up that last little piece of tower barely visible on the right of all that silver scaffold. Once the tower sections are down the base sections will be removed with forklifts.
All Toweres Down. There was a bit of a scare when taking down the last high tower, due to an inexperienced rigger. You see, each tower section is secured to a base. That base then rests on a two tonne base plate and is chained to the plate. This gives tremendous stability as the center of gravity becomes so low it's nigh on impossible to fall. BUT. Disconnect the base from the 2,200kg base plate and the stability is compromised.
Well what happened was, an inexperienced rigger, having seen the base be disconnected from the plate on the other side of the stage After the tower had been removed, came over to the last tower and started to disconnect the base from the base plate. He was seen just in time. Yelled at! And then made to reconnect it. And it reminded me of something me and Louis has been discussing. And that was, all the "riggers" walking around on the ground wearing safety harnesses - as if they were part of the climbing rigger team. Why do that? So the hired-in labor which is used to help carry scaffold bits and the like, would think that person must be skilled - so in their eyes they are getting Mental Kudos. And it also exemplifies why you need to remain vigilant - and - to work with the same crew.
Done. All towers gone. All bases gone. All base plates gone. A crane leaving the stadium about to run over me :o) And a couple of cranes left behind to put the last remaining pieces into containers. Completely derigged in two days. And a good two days it was too. With one of the riggers finishing here and then later that night derigging the Billy Joel concert which was also in town.
Despite the high humidity and oppressive 34ºC, the job was done enthusiastically and injury free - no injuries during set up and not during derig, even with all the crew and 16 forklifts on the go. Copious amounts of water were drunk by all. And thankfully, we also had a person regularly doing the rounds with a cart filled with bottles of cold water for people to drink. Because it's such conditions that people can do internal damage - working long and hard in the heat without drinking adequate amounts of water.
I enjoyed the build and the derig. Met a bunch of nice people - from intra and inter state as well as from overseas - and enjoyed it. And it was probably the largest single set any of us have worked on - four cranes used to build and five in the stadium during the derig; 16 forklifts running around Constantly, a couple of hundred crew - labor as well as climbers/riggers. Look forward to the next one.
1 Comments:
Many thanks Michael for all this very interesting information...WOW what a job but so well done
Joy in Melbourne
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