The high-technology show featured an all-digital fibre optic linked audio set-up using a Stagetec Cantus/Nexus control system and a JBL Vertec PA. For the first time, the show’s set was designed around an LED screen, with no less than three Lighthouse LVP1010 screens. Stefano Montesi, RAI’s technical head at Sanremo, says the idea for the LED screens was set designer Gaetano Castelli’s. They were supplied by Eurovideo, a Lighthouse rental partner based in Casarsa Della Delizia, who also handled installation, control and on-site assistance.
Owner Mario Prataviera told us: "For slightly over a year, we’ve been replacing the old rear-projection technology with the latest Lighthouse LED video displays featuring the ground-breaking surface-mounting LEDs. They have excellent vertical and horizontal viewing angles, ideal for TV use and a brightness of over 1000 Nits, sufficient to ‘compete’ with stage lighting. This is the largest number of pixels ever mounted in one display in Europe and the results were there for all to see in terms of image quality."
The main Lighthouse screen was mounted on a custom steel base built by RAI’s set construction team. Below the lighting truss, another pair of 384cm wide x 288 high screens was installed on track-mounted frames. Artists came on stage through these original ‘sliding doors’, which formed a single image when closed.
As well as the theatre audience at the event, the five nights were seen nationwide at prime time on RAI Channel 1, with an audience peak of 20 million, as well as being transmitted via Eurovision in Bosnia, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia and Slovenia, and seen live on RAI International in North America, Latin America, Australia, Asia and Africa.
(Lee Baldock)
