Flying, Fire & Flames at the European Games posted: 07/09/2015
Audiences were left enthralled and entranced by two dazzling Opening and Closing Ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games which saw Belgian based engineering specialist WIcreations involved in making some key elements of these innovative and beautiful shows come alive.
WIcreations was approached directly by California based production company FiveCurrents who produced the Ceremonies. WI's team was led by Yves Vervloet and worked closely with FiveCurrents' Senior Technical Director Nick Eltis.
The Heist-op-den-Berg based company was tasked with helping create some major visual moments, including the magic (flying) carpet during the Opening Ceremony, and design and construction of three performer stages for the Closing Ceremony, complete with a Temple of Fire rising up from beneath the largest one.
It was a fantastic event on which to work comments Yves, All of WI's departments and specialist disciplines were involved, and was a real team effort. We are all very proud to have been part of the eye-catching end results .
Flying Start
One of the Opening Ceremony Artistic Directors Dimitris Papaioannou was inspired by the Azerbaijani tradition of carpet-making for a section of the show, so a magic carpet - complete with famous Azerbaijani performer perched on top - was among the major WOW factors of the show.
WI proposed the best solution to create a realistic waving movement for the carpet as it sped through the air from the back of the stadium to the front of the Prodigal Stage where all the competing country flags were being flown.
The movement was achieved by designing and building a 12 cm high aluminium frame fitted with 42 moving arms - 21 per side - on a crank-shaft system, powered via a battery controlled DC servo motor, which sat underneath the cloth carpet and produced highly authentic flying carpet wave-like movement whilst whizzing on its journey!
The Flying Carpet
The 4 metre long by 2.5 metre wide carpet, complete with wave frame weighed under 200Kg and was picked up via four 4 mm steel wire cables and attached to a flying system engineered by TAIT.
The actual pattern on which this carpet was based is displayed in the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum and is from the family of current President Ilham Aliyev, so it was therefore vital that the flying version was perfectly replicated.
Weaving it from scratch was not practical and would have also been too heavy, so WI sourced an expert cloth printer in Belgium. Finishing the borders and the tassels were the most challenging and protracted part of this exercise, completed by hand by a master carpet-maker.
Underneath the top layer of carpet was a poly-stretch construction in the middle to provide the area on which the performer could comfortably and safely sit.
Thousands of cast members dressed in multi-coloured costumes were also used to create vivid geometric shapes on the circular field of play in the center stadium.
Firey Closing
For the Closing Ceremony, the WI team build three teardrop shaped performer stages, each covered in a video floor supplied by CT.
The largest was 2 metres high and equipped with a specially designed lifting system which allowed the Temple of Fire - a realistic scenic version of the castle-like religious temple in the Surakhani suburb of Baku - to rise up to 10 metres in the air, complete with performer on top during a section of the highly emotive, breath-taking finale.
One of the three teardrop shaped performer stages
Using some of that powerful and inventive WImagic' Yves explains how they developed four telescopic lifting systems, one in each corner of the temple, connected to trusses and with a lifting cap of 8 metres and an inner height of 1.65 metres.
The movement of the Spiralift motors raising the towers was so smooth and organic that it resembled grass growing in real-time, in the process creating some serious goose-bump moments for technical crew and audience alike.
The lifting was controlled via a Kinesys Vector system, and the four temple towers were made from double-layered fabric designed by WI in collaboration with soft goods specialist Showtex. Each tower had remote controlled flames bursting out.
WI managed to design and fit the lifting system into the stage with only 2 mm gaps to spare at the edges, enabling it to be completely concealed! Anyone watching from the higher levels of the nearly 70,000 capacity stadium or looking at the overhead camera shots on TV and admiring the stunning images shooting across the video floors - would have absolutely no idea that anything would start rising out of the stage!
The Temple of Fire
The WI team were delighted to be involved in the opening and closing ceremonies of this first European Games, which have won much acclaim for their eye-catching vibrancy, fantastic choreography and all-encompassing entertainment value, also helping establish Azerbaijan as a contender for future world class sporting events.
Nick Eltis concludes, It was great to work with the WI team. They took our requirements on-board and worked with us to develop the ideas and give excellent results. On site, they were efficient and a pleasure to work with, and the fire temple for the Closing Ceremony looked beautiful.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Flying, Fire & Flames at the European Games posted: 07/09/2015 
