© Copyright Clive Young

From Rental & Staging Systems, August, 2002.

A Special Event
By Clive Young

Stillwater, OK--Every May for the last 19 years, Oklahoma State University has opened its gates to thousands of athletes as it hosts the Special Olympics Oklahoma Summer Games. This year's edition marked the 19th time the University has hosted the games and the first time that the production of the massive opening ceremonies were handled by Ford Audio-Video Systems, Inc. (Tulsa, OK).

The torch-lighting was the high-point of the evening, but prior to it, pre-show festivities got underway at 7PM. A local band, Rewind, took to the stage to play for an hour as the audience assembled on Lewis Field, a football field with stands at the University. The audio system used by the band was of course supplied by Ford Audio-Video, and included a Crown-powered JBL Array series PA. The band was mixed on an Allen & Heath GL3300 console which handled both Front of House and monitor duties. The monitor system was also a JBL rig; no personal monitor systems were used, nor were any wireless mics. The desk also handled audio in conjunction with a local Cox Communications TV remote truck: "We fed Cox audio from our board, and they in turn fed us audio from any pre-produced video that they played during the ceremony from their production truck," said Joe Kennedy, Ford's rental coordinator.

Even reaching the pre-show events was an accomplishment; Ford AV had been setting up two days before the festivities as it was also providing staging and lighting in addition to audio for the event. According to Kennedy, the company sent a crew of four to handle the load-in, aided by volunteers from a nearby Air Force base and others from within the Special Olympics organization, resulting in at least 16 pairs of hands helping put the production together.

First up was a Bil-Jax stage, set up in a 24-by-16-foot configuration; no stage thrusts were used, nor was a roofing system. As a result, most of the lighting was provided by a pair of lighting trees on Genie lifts, hoisted about 25 feet in the air. "The stage height itself was about three feet and there was a backdrop at the back of the stage as well, which came to about 15 feet," recalled Kennedy.

That's not to say that the lighting was an afterthought, however. Not only did it have to create atmosphere, it also had quite a practical use--Cox Communications was on-hand with five cameras, taping the event for airing throughout the state later on in the month.

"We had some effect lighting on the backdrop to highlight some of the banners noting the different areas that athletes were involved in, special awards that they were giving, and so on," said Kennedy. "For the basic lighting, because there was TV production going on, we had a stage wash, but nothing elaborate--no intelligent lighting or anything like that, just pretty straight-forward stuff. We had 30 to 36 fixtures to light the stage and then some backlighting, roughly10 to 12 fixtures. We used a lot of ETC lights."

The backdrop and the all-important Olympic torch also garnered special attention from the lighting designers: "We did one special light--there was a screen in the middle of the backdrop where we projected a Gobo logo of the Special Olympics. Behind that was the torch, and we worked in conjunction with the fireworks people for lighting the torch. The torch was elevated behind the screen and was lit via a rocket that went from the stands and across on a wire; as it passed the torch, it lit the torch up."

After Rewind finished playing during the pre-show festivitites, the Opening Ceremonies got underway at 8PM, featuring the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Torch Run, which Kennedy described as "Basically, Tulsa police officers lined up and came in with a big display of motorcycles, they brought the torch in and up and lit it at 9 o'clock to start the ceremony." After that came an athlete parade featuring the 3,500 contestants of the games, and an awards ceremony, where the 2002 Special Olympics Athlete of the Year, Coach of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, Family of the Year, Spirit Award Winner and Mike Synar Award for Excellence awards were handed out. Presenting the awards were OSU men's basketball coach Eddie Sutton, football coach Les Miles and former Dallas Cowboys and University of Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer.

When the evening's festivities were completed, Ford AV's work was far from completed. Instead of breaking down and loading out the equipment and the stage, the set-up was moved to another location on the campus. "We tore it down in about four and a half hours and changed locations with PA and some of the lighting, too, to another location on campus, and reset that the next morning for the dance that evening," he explained.

It's all in a day's work for Ford AV, however. Kennedy noted, "We do a lot of work at OSU--graduation ceremonies; Orange Peel, which is a large concert they hold that we've done for three years out of the five years they've held it. It involves national acts and a large PA system on Lewis Field, so we're real familiar with working there. We're also used to working in the Ceratina Center which is a more of a theater setting, which they get acts to come in there too at OSU. So we're pretty involved with that type of production or show there."

That said, concert production is only a small part of what the company does on a daily basis. "We do a lot more corporate than a lot of concert," said Kennedy. "We don't do a lot of outdoor concerts, but we do a lot at the Cox Convention Center down here; we also used to do things in the Christian realm, Southern Baptist convention, when they have large acts come in, but we do a lot of corporate events, which is probably our mainstay."

At the end of the evening, the Special Olympics opening ceremonies came off without a hitch, as did the dance the next day. In fact, according to Kennedy, "The only drawback was Oklahoma weather--wind is always a difficulty outdoors, so that presented a challenge, getting the aesthetics correct and that sort of thing, but that was the only thing we ran into that delayed us a little bit." All of which made for an event that was extra Special.