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Melinda Fedorow was the Producer for the Centennial Ceremony staged in Sydney’s Centennial Park to mark the 100th anniversary of the Federation of Australia.
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Melinda Fedorow
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Background
Fedorow spent seven years with the Sydney Dance Company touring around Australia and the world in venues as diverse as France, Castle Hill and Columbia. The shows were big and the logistics complex - moving people, sets and equipment from theatre to theatre, calling the shows on the fly in languages other than English and often working on a shoe string budget. These were challenges that provided experience that she has readily applied in her recent roles.
Since leaving SDC, Fedorow held a number of positions in Production Management on some very large events including Harbour Coordinator for Australia Day celebrations. The latest in this line was the Olympics Closing Night Harbour Spectacular that saw Mel coordinating the crews and harbour transport to the 24 river sites and main firing barges on the harbour.
Although Fedorow started on the Centenary of Federation project in July 98, she has “kept her hand in” through secondment to other events. Fedorow believes it is important to experience new challenges and achieve new goals. This is not always possible when you work with one company.
On NYE last year, Mel was Stage Manager and show caller for the spectacular HouseDance on the sails of the SOH, for the ABC/BBC millennium broadcast. “This involved dangling six performers on ropes off the sails, with 6 riggers and mechanists, who could not see them, controlling them as they moved up and down and across at great speed. It was a great challenge.”
Of these experiences she says, “I learnt things on those events that are helping me now”.
Overview of the Centennial Celebration role
Fedorow is the producer of the Centennial Celebration and reports to the Arts & Events Manager (Warren Pearson). One of her first jobs when she started in the role was to write the first advert for an “Entertainment Director”, recruiting that key person, then the designers, composers, musicians, writers and creative team. Followed by the operational team and other key staff. The role of the “Entertainment Director” grew and developed and then changed to that of “Creative Director”. Andrew Walsh was appointed to that role in March ‘99.
Mel produced the first Business Management Plan and budget for the event. Her original budget estimate was around double the $2m budget that was eventually allocated. To put this in perspective, Fedorow points out that the budget for this event, is about 20% of the lighting budget for the opening of the Sydney Olympic Games.
“We are producing a one-in-one-hundred year event for not a significant amount of money and every computer, every bit of stationary and every cabcharge has to be accounted for out of that budget. It doesn’t leave a lot for the artistic side of the event.”
The lead up
As part of the preparation for this event, the production team went to look at several big Olympic events and also the Royal Easter Show.
Fedorow’s experience of working with SOCOG while she was with the Olympic Arts Festival was also very useful, first to understand how such an organization worked, but also for the useful contacts she made when it came time to talk to the various authorities involved.
The Centennial Park Trust were also heavily involved in the Olympics (cycling and marathons) so crowd management issues for example were assessed by that organization well before this event.
The Event Teams
There are 18 people in the core team. These were split between Production and Programming.
The production team included a Production Manager, coordinator, site manager, technicians, wardrobe, etc.
The Programming team was made up of Event Coordinators and the key operations people from the various performance groups such as the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Gondwana Children’s Choir and the Sydney Philharmonia.
The Set design and challenges
The set for the Centenary Celebration was designed by Brian Thompson, well known for his theatre and opera sets from the original Rocky Horror Show and Jesus Christ Superstar to the set for the Olympics Closing Ceremony.
The stage was located in the parade ground near the Centennial Park restaurant. The unique design featured an enormous roof perched at a 45 degree angle and a stage area that sloped down into the audience. Both the roof and floor were designed to facilitate projections (by The Electric Canvas).
Construction of the stage commenced on 4th December. The stage is 90 metres wide it has a projection screen 10 metres by 20 metres above it.
Fedorow was full of praise for Production Manager Richard Montgomery who put in a lot of work with Edwin Shirley Staging and Brian Thompson to bring the design to fruition. It was vital that the design would stand up from a technical perspective. It took 6-7 months before the sign off could take place. In fact a lot of engineering design and testing went into the final design. The roof was supported by a lot of ballast to keep it on the right angle. The roof was designed with a guttering system so that rain was not a problem. The main risk was that the roof could act like a sail in high winds. The construction was such that in the event that the wind reached a certain velocity the crew could climb up and dismantle the sail from the rigging frame and roll it down into the base.
The site had no power, no access roads and although the park has an irrigation system, this water could not be accessed as it comes from a bore. Everything had to be brought to the site. The backstage area became a small town with offices, dressing rooms, power, water, sewerage, catering and every thing else brought in to the site. During the event over 450 performers, crew and staff were housed in the main backstage compound while another compound was established for the television Outside Broadcast.
So that the grounds were not damaged a moveable driveway had to be installed for vehicle access including for the large vehicles required to deliver and erect the stage. Although the Parade Ground is quite solid the park was originally swamp.
The moveable driveways protected the grass and also helped to keep shoes clean as performers made their way to the white stage.
The TV Coverage
Before the big event I asked Mel about the TV coverage for such a significant event. Fedorow explained that “The event is a theatrical style show and the ABC are approaching it as such ie like opera or theatre.” Having worked with the ABC TV director, Stephen Birstow in previous years when the ABC covered Sydney Dance Company performances, Federow was confident that he would do the event justice. She likened it to a grand opera spectacular and with a non-stop flow of entertainment.
Other Technical Aspects
All audio for the production was pre-recorded including the orchestra, the choirs and even the narrators. The soloists performed live but their guide tracks were pre-recorded. The main reason the narrators were pre-recorded was to fit with the underlying sound track that was synchronized to the cue track for the projected images.
On the project imagery, Fedorow explained that they were exploiting the same technology that has been used on a range of big events. Fedorow saw this technology first used to great effect by Ian de Grucy at Flinders Street station in Melbourne. She was so impressed that she came up with the idea to project onto the side of the Norwegian Star for Australian Day last year. Other examples where it was put to use were on the Homelands performance on the AMP building at Circular Quay during the Olympics.
The production team
The team is strong, young and dedicated with a wealth of experience particularly in the performing arts fields. Fedorow believes that this background provided good grounding for an event such as this. Theatre provides the eye for detail and planning necessary to ensure that nothing can go wrong. In theatre, people are used to working with small budgets and tight timeframes.
Concluding Remarks
Fedorow concluded that her involvement on this event was a pinnacle in her career but she hopes there are many more highs to come.
I asked Federow what was the biggest challenges on this event
- Dealing with the range of agencies and key stake holders such as the Centennial Park Trust and the four councils that surround Centennial Park, the emergency services, various departments including ageing and disability services.
- Getting attention from the various authorities during the Olympics. It wasn’t that people didn’t want to talk, they were just too busy. Fedorow estimates that they lost approximately 3 months in the planning and production.
- The final and biggest challenge was making such a big project a success with the budget allocated.
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