Expo Sevilla
Expo Sevilla was a turning point in my life. In March 0f 1992 I moved to Sevilla in Spain to help produce and run the nightly show at the Expo 92 lake area.
Expo Sevilla was an amazing time not just for me but for everyone there – guest or worker and for me it was without doubt one of the best times of my life and I will never ever forget it.
It started for me during a chance meeting in London in October 1991. I had a meeting with Laser Creations who told me that they had a show in Spain and they were struggling to find crew to go for a full year.
I of course volunteered and found myself working super hard to learn as much as I could about laser and show production over the next 6 months and then during March 1992 I was in a truck heading for the Expo Sevilla site.
What I saw at Expo Sevilla scared the hell out of me, but many moons later and a lot of blood sweat and tears, the massive team and I pulled off one of the best shows I have ever seen.
The Expo Sevilla show was a massive epic of an really international team from America, France, Spain and England and I am sure some others and hundreds of hours of love and work.
When the 1st show opened there were about 250,000 in the audience and I think about 80million on satellite TV. It was one of the proudest moments of my career to be working on this amazing Expo Sevilla project.
We had three units of 35 watt I400 coherent Argon gas lasers and three units of Krypton 15 watt Coherent lasers, which for a while we swapped out with Dye lasers for a while.
There were six 45 meter waterscreens and each of the laser systems projected onto two waterscreens using a double head scanning system and the whole laser scanning systems were being run by three Acorn A5000 computers with the “Ultimate” laser controller.
The Expo Sevilla lake show film projection was made by six 70mm film projectors which also sent the signal to all of the equipment so that everything could sync into it. The film contained a metal strip which triggered the time code generator.
There were also 12 units of Hardware slide projectors with scrolling slides and at least 6 units of color changing skytrackers by Syncrolite. I think these were the first color changing skytrackers in the world and were launched at the Expo Sevilla.
Over 30 Million people came to see the Expo Sevilla show live which was an amazing figure in itself and more than 100 countries participated in the event.
For me the Expo Sevilla was a baptism of fire into the laser industry. I absolutely loved it, even thought there were nights of tears and frustration and I have no idea how many sunrises I saw programming and tweaking, but it was substantial.
I have never worked on a project as big as this again and it will always be a show that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. I met so many great people there and the Expo Sevilla show was a show that completely changed my life.
I was so privileged to be part of such and incredible show and I will look forward to another time when I can perform more shows that come close to the show at Expo Sevilla.
