The spectacular animation show that transformed Buckingham Palace into a block of council flats, a karaoke screen and a Union Jack on Monday was a triumph of last-minute planning, secrecy and comic flair.
It was also a dry run for the Olympic Games. Sam Pattinson, who masterminded the projections for the Jubilee concert, told The Times yesterday that Treatment, his company, was preparing “varied and massive” visuals for the closing ceremony in August.
Details of the event are confidential, but it is being planned by Kim Gavin, a former dancer who produced Take That’s past two tours and the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium in 2007. The projections for the opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle, the film and theatre director, are being put together by 59 Productions, best known for their video work with the National Theatre on War Horse.
The Jubilee concert pulled in more than 17 million viewers, making it the most watched programme on British television since the royal wedding last year. Its line-up divided viewers, with Cheryl Cole, Will.i.am, JLS and Sir Cliff Richard coming off worst, and Stevie Wonder, Grace Jones, Madness and Sir Elton John receiving the best notices.
What everybody agreed on was the stunning impact of the light show. The most memorable idea of the night — projecting six types of common housing façade onto the building while Madness performed Our House on the roof — came from the BBC’s director for the event, Geoff Posner, who directed the alternative comedies Not The Nine O’Clock News and The Young Ones.
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Mr Pattinson feared the idea was “a little bit cheeky” and prepared a contingency plan, but the only ideas the Royal Family rejected were “less important”.
The BBC approached Treatment to put together the visuals “about a month ago”. The company produced content for Sir Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano Shows in Las Vegas last year, for Lady Gaga and for U2’s epic 360 Tour in 2009-11. However, the late notice left them with a huge workload.
Treatment took a laser scan of the palace façade three weeks ago, which they used to build an architectural model and plan the show, using a projection mapping technique developed about five years ago by a Paris-based collective called Exyst.
They started testing projections at the Palace from last Wednesday, often working till 4am. A full rehearsal was held on Saturday night, with Madness playing on the roof in “torrential rain”. Everybody missed it. “There weren’t too many leaks,” Mr Pattinson said. “On the whole we got away with it.”
The lighting came from 36 projectors in six 3m-tall towers of six positioned inside the courtyard of the Palace and manually controlled from a “very basic, crowded” cabin on the same forecourt.
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Vital roles went to outside specialists. They included Luke Collins, a freelance lighting programmer, who lit up every “La” in the chorus to Crocodile Rock as Sir Elton conducted a singalong backed by giant lyrics on the palace. For the Madness sequence Mr Pattinson recruited Trunk Animation, a small firm based in Bermondsey that fuses fine arts with a quirky sense of humour. Their proudest moment prior to Monday night was winning a Children’s Bafta in 2008 for a short film on BBC Newsround.
For Our House they superimposed six housing exteriors onto the palace, including ones based on an estate in Camberwell, Georgian houses in Islington and a brick terrace in Manchester.
According to Richard Barnett, a partner in Trunk, life “has gone wild”, with messages of congratulation pouring in.