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Robe supports St Stephen’s Day spectacle in Budapest

Robe moving lights were used in three major locations for the 2023 St. Stephen’s Day celebrations in Budapest, Hungary, which this year attracted over 1.5 million spectators to the banks of the Danube River watch the main large format projection and drone show. Multiple events were staged throughout the country’s capital city on the day, with technical production - lighting sound, visuals, staging - for the event co-ordinated and delivered by the Visual Europe Group (VEG), working with twelve sub-companies.

The three main areas in which Robe fixtures were used were the riverside “Road Movie Live” concert stage with a line-up of top Hungarian artists running over three days of the holiday weekend; the Parliament Building, where Robe Fortes supported the projections mapped onto the building’s facade; and on the Elisabeth Bridge where more Robe Fortes were utilised to throw beams, colour and texturing from the bridge, across the water onto the riverbanks.

Road Movie Live
A 20-metre-wide concert stage was erected at Muegyetem Rakpart with capacity for 15,000 people. The lighting production design was created by VEG. Account director Kristof Nagy created a scheme to provide “the best visual experience for all of the bands” who played during daylight and after dark, amounting to 4 or 5 each day, festival style. Sixteen Robe BMFL Spots, 36 MegaPointes and eighteen Tarrantulas were prominent on this year’s rig, run via MA Control.

The Parliament Building
The front façade projection mapping system for the 268 metre long Hungarian Parliament Building was designed by the VEG team who rigged forty-nine 35K projectors across the opposite side river on the Buda banks, throwing a series of images approximately 400 metres for the 35-minute show synchronised to music. To augment and support the colourful and kinetic digital art being projected, forty Robe Fortes were positioned on two levels, with some lights placed on the building’s numerous balconies and others along the ground in front. Deployment of the Fortes involved luminaires being manually carried through the building, often via tiny winding passages and up and down steep and narrow staircases.

Elisabeth (Erzsébet) Bridge
This was the third area to feature Robe products with 76 x Fortes helping transform the bridge into a visual feature for those who saw the main show live. The Fortes - with SelbyGuard rain dome covers - were positioned in lines both sides of the bridge and used to light its concrete pylons and steel supports. They were also used as beam and searchlight effects, again part of a design conceived by the same VEG team involved in all the main events in and around the city. VEG has invested steadily in Robe over recent years.

All these St Stephen’s Day installations were generator powered, with a large Riedel MediorNet system utilised for integrating lighting video and sound data signals together for the time coded main show. The network stretched 4.5 kilometres along the riverside site and included a large fibre circle embracing both sides, enabling signal/data to be sent from anywhere in between the Petofi Bridge at one end and the Margaret Bridge at the other.

The production build-up period around the city started seven days before the event and challenges for VEG included co-ordinating around 800 crew. The main show had two technical rehearsals to co-ordinate all the elements across this vast space, which was broadcast live on Duna Televízió (TV Duna) and its online platforms.

It included two drone shows, one in the first six minutes and one in the last six minutes, in two different positions, each using 400 drones. The show’s creative direction was by Centrum Production who also produced the video mapped animations and other content as well as liaising with government departments about the symbols used and the narrative direction.

(Photos: VEG/Balogh Zoltán)

www.robe.cz

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