APRIL 22
Morn Morn!
Jepp, you got it. Thats hello in Norwegian!
First of all, some REALLY good news! Most airports are open again after the mess created by the Volcano!
The picture below is from airport here in Oslo this morning!
Luso Pirotécnia is a fantastic Portuguese pyro company known for magnificent fireworks and a unique way to present the art of pyrotechnics. I always feel very lucky when we find fantastic talent locally! Meet the team L to R: Tomas, Sergio, João Paula, Paul, Vitor, Xavier, Vera, Dario, Hugo, João, Bruno and Nelson on the floor! Great job guys!
Crazy………
Anyway, yesterday was the first day of production inside the venue for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010.
There has been construction going on outside the venue for a couple of weeks, building tents, installing generators, containers and stuff, but the official takeover of the actaul venue was yesterday morning at 06:00. This is my 8th Euovision Song Contest, and I have to say, yesterday was the BEST first day ever, with very little problems!
First truck in the venue! We are blessed with one gate tall enough to bring in trucks, so we can unload our gear inside, on the arena floor, and that, of course, makes life easy!
We unloaded a total of 20 trucks with lights, truss and rigging inside yesterday, and another 55 outside, so detailed logistics is a key in everything we do here.
All gear going up in the roof, needs to be sniffed by bombdogs. We suspected that this would be a speed bump during load in, but boy were we wrong! A big THANK YOU to Norwegian Police, for being so flexible, so cool, so professional, and so efficient! You and your dogs are ROCK STARS!
This is how we did it: The trucks came in four at the time, the gear was unloaded in a ¨ check zone¨
Alll cases were opened up, and the three dogs at our disposal checked them. Once a item was cleared, it was marked with a blue sticker, and rolled out in the ¨safe zone¨ which is pretty much the entire arena floor, minus check zone. Worked like a charm!
Some gear, like truss on dolly’s was checked optical rather than sniffed by dogs, to keep the flow, and make it easier for both us, and the dogs.
This is where we’ll camp out the first 10-12 days in the venue. Soon to be filled with production cases and other stuff that us managers need to look busy.
See how happy we are! From left to right: Malcolm Birkett- Master Cad Drawer, Rich Gorrod- Gaffer, Matthias Rau- PRG Project Manager, and a innocent white rabbit named Ola Melzig.
No, it’s not God…….. It’s our Lighting Designer Al Gurdon, trying to find the strength for yet another day in the virtual pre programming studio in London.
Dennis, Geele, Uwe and gang enjoying the sunshine at the patio outside our VERY big catering tent.
We had some small challanges getting all the crew on site in time for load inn, due to the Volcano. Matthias took Mirko, Ralph and Dr Love, aka Philip Boht in a car, and drove up from Hamburg, since they all had to be on site at the venue 06:00 for marking up the floor. The rest of the German crew took a cruise ship from Kiel, and arrived to Oslo at 10:00 this morning, and the UK crew had to jump on a nightliner in London Tuesday, and drive all the way up here, arriving 03:00 this morning. In short, all involved in this show, coming from abroad had to travel by train, car or bus to get here. Besides me and Joan 🙂 Our flight from Stockholm operated Tuesday, sometimes you get lucky!
Here are two of a long row of superstars! Mona, with slightly pink hair is managing Stunt Squad, who provides us with catering. Linda, with less pink hair, is crew chief for Oslo Kru, who is supplying all our local crew.
Some of you may remember back in 2007 in Helsinki when this website was very elaborate and we had an area where the public could leave comments. Well, I got a lot of emails from people missing that feature last year so we decided to start a facebook group for the diary called, what else…..
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120379077975026&ref=ts
See you tomorrow!
