How to present a magnificent water, land, and air scene that attracted 200000 tourists to watch, by the Huangpu River
At the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Tourism Festival held on the evening of September 16th, a three-dimensional water, land, and air landscape consisting of 19 colorful boats, 16 themed floats, and 1000 drones presented a panoramic view of Shanghai's urban scenery and cultural charm to Chinese and foreign tourists. That evening, about 200000 tourists went to the waterfront area of the Bund to enjoy this festive spectacle.
How was this water, land, and air panoramic opening ceremony praised by tourists as both beautiful and cool created? What difficulties have you experienced? Zhang Han, the chief director of the opening ceremony of this year's Shanghai Tourism Festival and the chief producer of the large-scale event department of Oriental TV, gave an exclusive interview to the Jiefang Daily Shangguan News reporter, telling behind the scenes stories.
"The easiest way to do 'subtraction' is to do 'addition'."
On the evening of the 16th, at the North Bund International Passenger Transport Center pier, under the shining lights of the high-rise buildings in Xiaolujiazui, floats, performance teams, and colorful boats passed by one after another. 1000 drones were arranged in the sky with various texts and patterns. In front of the dock, the water stage with three-dimensional patterns such as tourist festival signs rolling and playing is particularly eye-catching. A live audience exclaimed, "This is the best stage in Shanghai, worth an immersive performance with the theme of 'Impression Magic City'!"
The opening ceremony of the tourism festival has a cool stage effect. Photographed by Meng Yuhan
The best stage presentation is not a day's work. Zhang Han told reporters that as soon as the Spring Festival passed this year, the planning for the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Tourism Festival had already begun. After three years of epidemic, the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism and the director's team hope to fully return to the grand opening of the offline Shanghai Tourism Festival this year. The two iconic rivers, Huangpu River and Suzhou River, are naturally taken into consideration.
Before the opening ceremony of this year's tourism festival, Zhang Han served as the chief director of the Huaihai Road float parade for ten years. It may seem familiar, but the venue of the opening ceremony has changed, and the situation is completely different.
"We visited several places along the Huangpu River, focusing on Chen Yi Square, Huangpu Park near Suzhou River, and the International Passenger Transport Center." Zhang Han said that the reason for choosing the National Passenger Transport Center Pier is firstly because the river here is not so wide, and the landscape on the opposite side is clearly visible; Secondly, from this perspective, the layout of the "Four Piece Set" tall buildings in Lujiazui is also relatively relaxed, resulting in better viewing effects. The other two venues were not included in the plan due to various limitations.
But there are also shortcomings in the national passenger center terminal. As a docking point for cruise ships, the passenger terminal, which mainly serves the functions of boarding and disembarking passengers, has limited space. With a combination of stands, the area reserved for actors to perform is limited. Therefore, the director's team decided to set up a water stage on the Huangpu River as an extension of the ground.
The water stage is integrated with the dock. Photographed by Meng Yuhan
The main body of the water stage is a 92 meter long barge parked on the river surface. On this basis, additional facilities such as generators, lighting and stage design, large screens, and restrooms are added to turn the entire barge into a fully functional stage. Quickly, the question arises: The tides of the Huangpu River change every day. How high should the stage on the barge be so that it is exactly level with the dock floor?
After communication with the maritime department, both parties have made precise calculations: based on the Huangpu River tide level at the opening of the tourism festival at 7:30 pm on September 16th, a 2.2 meter high stage will be built on a barge, which can maintain the same height of the water stage and the dock ground for 40 minutes during the opening ceremony. During the performance, the barge section below the stage must be "invisible" below the ground. In order to lower the barge to the appropriate height, a full 100 tons of ballast water were loaded onto the ship. The construction of the entire stage took 10 days.
For the grand opening ceremony of the tourism festival, setting up the stage is just a small step. In countless interactions with the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, both sides have gradually added up: the float parade and performance teams are very popular among the public and should be retained; The water and land landscapes are excellent, and aerial drone performances can also be included; With the Huangpu River as the background, the colorful boat parade must be arranged
Behind each addition, there is a significant amount of concrete work involved. The addition of float parades and performance teams means that the rehearsal time is greatly advanced. Drone performances involve the application and approval of airspace use, while colorful boat parades require coordination and cooperation from the maritime department. When a panoramic view of water, land, and air is presented to people, it is backed by the joint efforts of multiple departments such as cultural tourism, maritime affairs, public security, and fire protection.
"The easiest way is to do 'subtraction', but we need to do 'addition' and strive to do it to the extreme, not to do 'subtraction' unless absolutely necessary," said Zhang Han.
Drone performance with precise checkpoints to the second
At the opening ceremony of this tourism festival, the performance of 1000 drones left a deep impression on many citizens and tourists. In addition to the words "Hello China!", "Enjoy Shanghai", "Illuminate the World Reception Hall", and "Shanghai Tourism Festival", the drone has also been combined to form a three-dimensional version of the tourism festival mascot "Le Le", which is very eye-catching in the night sky.
Due to battery limitations, the duration of the drone performance needs to be controlled within 10 minutes. The director team ultimately locked the drone performance time to 8 minutes, but the actual planning time was as long as two months. "Drones have been banned from flying on the Huangpu River for a long time, so the most difficult part of flying drones at the opening ceremony is the approval process. I am very grateful to the Cultural and Tourism Bureau for helping me achieve this idea," said Zhang Han.
For drone flying companies, it is not difficult to transform various text shapes in the air. The most difficult thing is to present the three-dimensional image of "Lele" in the air through programming, and to achieve the transformation from the traditional version of "Lele" to the cyberpunk version of "Lele", which has undergone repeated modifications. "Stereoscopic imagery involves three-dimensional digital modeling, which is much more complex than flat presentation."
The three-dimensional version of the tourism festival mascot "Lele" composed of drones. Photo by Li Baohua
Another major challenge in drone performances is the need to follow the opening ceremony process to perform "card minute card second". We hope that when the opening news of the Shanghai Tourism Festival is announced, the flying bird pattern composed of drones and the text of "Shanghai Tourism Festival" will scatter like fireworks, presenting the most beautiful visual effect. After repeated calculations, the drone's takeoff time is locked at 75 seconds. Therefore, 75 seconds before the live broadcast of the opening ceremony of the tourism festival, Zhang Han gave the first command: "Drone takeoff!"
The subsequent drone performance went smoothly, and the time checkpoint was also perfect. Zhang Han admitted that a large part of this is due to luck in "watching the sky and eating". Due to the unique nature of the Huangpu River region, the opportunity for unmanned aerial vehicles to rehearse before the official performance is very limited. The director's team and collaborating company were originally scheduled to test fly the drone at 24:00 on September 14th, but it rained that night and rehearsals could not proceed; On the evening of September 15th at 23:30, after a long period of rain, it finally stopped. According to the approval time, the test flight rehearsal will start at 24:00. After the successful completion of the test flight, everyone had confidence in their hearts.
"If it rains during the opening ceremony of the Tourism Festival on September 16th, what will happen to the drone performance?" Faced with reporters' questioning, Zhang Han smiled and said, "Even if it rains, we can fly, but these drones may not be useful in the future." It turned out that the drone flying company Yujia Technology sponsored the drone performance at the opening ceremony of the Tourism Festival in a public welfare form, and the company's manager stated, "No matter whether it's sunny or rainy, we will fly without fail!"
Fortunately, the sky was beautiful, and on the opening night of the tourism festival, the sky over Pujiang was clear and cloudless. The 1000 drones that brought people a beautiful visual experience were unscathed and successfully completed their performance tasks.
Late at night, the relevant officials and director group of the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism held a meeting to study the process of the opening ceremony. Respondents provide pictures
In the process of constantly pursuing details, Zhang Han also had some aspects that he could not achieve. During the stage performance of the opening ceremony of the tourism festival, 19 colorful boats sailed past the Huangpu River one after another, forming a flowing stage background. According to the initial plan, when these colorful boats carrying urban cultural and tourism IPs such as "One River, One River Tour", "Architecture for Reading", "New Space for Performing Arts", "Shanghai style Urban Archaeology", and "Good Places at Home" sail to the middle of the stage by the river, the host will introduce the connotation of each colorful boat separately.
But in actual rehearsals, the director team found that it was almost impossible to complete the task of matching the time when the colorful boat appeared with the host's linking words one by one. "Although the speed of the colorful boat is relatively fixed, the water flow rate of the Huangpu River is uncertain, and there will be a time difference when the colorful boat sails behind the main stage." Zhang Han said that after discovering this issue during the rehearsal, the director's team worked all night on September 15th to modify the plan. Finally, the overall introduction of the colorful boat was advanced, making it the background for the stage to sail by, and the corresponding introduction section was canceled.
There are regrets, but more touching
The opening ceremony of the Shanghai Tourism Festival, which lasted only 40 minutes, won a lot of praise. While Zhang Han and his team members were pleased, they also left some regrets behind.
For example, in order to embody the purpose of the Shanghai Tourism Festival, which is a festival for the people, the director team specially added the previously popular float and team performances to the program. However, due to the limited space in the National Guest Center, the number of spectators that can be accommodated, as well as the float and team itself, cannot be compared to the scale of Huaihai Road before, and the opening ceremony duration has been greatly shortened.
Zhang Han gave Hu Ge, who will be promoting environmentally friendly routes at the opening ceremony, the key points in advance. Respondents provide pictures
In the end, the director's team selected a few selected performance teams and floats to perform on stage, while others parked at the dock for display. In the future, these floats will also travel to various districts of Shanghai to receive evaluations from citizens and tourists. Zhang Han said that in order to allow more people to witness the excitement of the opening ceremony of the Tourism Festival in real time, Eastern TV, Leyou Shanghai, People's Daily Online, and others have all conducted synchronous live broadcasts and continuously edited and released exciting clips in the form of short videos, allowing more people to share the beauty and joy of the Tourism Festival.
In the past decade or so, Zhang Han has spent almost every day soaking at the National Guest Center dock. From the initial construction of the water stage to the rehearsal starting from September 10th, it rained almost every day. On the opening day of the Shanghai Tourism Festival on the 16th, the rain did not stop between 14:00 and 16:00. A few hours later, the opening ceremony of the tourism festival will be held.
"After being busy for so long and encountering bad weather, everyone's emotions were a bit overwhelmed at the time, but I insisted, 'It's all raining now, and it won't rain again later.'" Although that was said, Zhang Han himself was not so confident and could only have expectations for the weather forecast. At 17:00 that day, when she looked up at the sky again from her busy days, she found that the dark clouds above her head were gradually drifting towards the direction of Pudong. Looking back at the sky above the White Magnolia Square near the dock, a golden glow appeared in the gloomy sky for many days, adding a layer of golden border to the nearby clouds. The sky cleared up!
At that moment, Zhang Han almost shed tears. "Perhaps everyone's hard work for so many days has moved the heavens, and we finally have a perfect stage!"
