JESC2022: Creating the stage for Junior Eurovision 2022

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 (#JESC2022) held in Yerevan, Armenia, has come and gone, leaving behind a legacy of dazzling performances and show-stopping displays.

However, what makes this event much more than just a singing contest is the elaborate stage design that forms the centerpiece of the show.

I had the opportunity to participate in the creation of the stage for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 and in this article I reveal some of the features of this unique object.

Creating a stage for a major event like JESC2022 requires more than just standard solutions and knowledge. It requires creativity, innovation, and the ability to adapt to unique project requirements.

The stage is a creative visual representation of the official artwork. The centre stage is the spinning top surrounded by strings of light that represent the ‘spinning’. These colourful strings are also reflected above the stage and radiate the energy from every single performance. While being minimalist, yet technologically advanced, the stage design offers multiple staging possibilities for all of the performers. David Tserunyan, Executive Producer of Junior Eurovision 2022

Part of the stage were light beams built on two tiers, around the stage and above it. The beams themselves were made up as a combination of linear lights of 0.5 and 1 meter long and were pretty easy to implement.

However, this seemingly simple concept presented a nightmare to design as each beam of the lower tier should had its own unique stand, taking into account the number of lights in the beam, the height, and tilt of the beam.

As you could already guess I was assigned a task of designing beam racks and stands in order to put the beams in to their exact places in accordance with the design idea so that all beams form a solid lighting pattern.

According to stage design each of the 72 lower tier beams has defined length and had to be placed at an exact azimuth angle, incline, and height above the floor. The beams positions started from a horizontal at stage level on the left and the right of the stage and gradually descended and tilted towards the center.

On the other hand, the upper tier was simplier to design, with 62 co-planar beams of different lengths. However, upper tier rack design involved another challenges - (1) racks had to be pre-assembled on ground, (2) racks should be identical to simplify production, and (3) racks had to span over several adjacent beams to facilitate alignment after lifting.

The design was done in Fusion 360 and took several days to implement. It involved a lot of challenges and brought invaluable experience. It was surely one of the largest scale projects I was involved into.

Before starting the work I set myself a challenge to make the model as parametric and flexible as possible allowing for changes to be made without the need to rebuild everything by hand. Some of the inputs considered were stage height and diameter and beams distribution. Failing to make parametric model could have resulted in the need to rebuild the whole model in case of design variations.

Modern realities require flexibility, including the ability to clarify tasks during the work process.

Each beam of the lower tier has the unique support rack - it was designed taking into account the number of lighting fixtures in the beam, the height, and tilt angle of the beam. This was the most complex part of the work, where each rack should be configured using parameters based on formulas depending on its number.

There were also some parameters common to all racks - the maximum angle, the height of the fixture in the central part of stage, and the parameters of the distribution law. Thanks to parametric model, it was possible to rebuild the entire lower tier by changing two or three parameters of the model and it payed out once or twice during the project.

In order to properly assemble all the racks around the stage the spacers were designed. They aid setting beam angle and spacing and help holding racks upright. Compared to racks design spacers design was truly a piece of cake, since they were all identical and based on model common parameters.

Upper tier mount design was relatively simple as well. Mounting consisted of inner and outer circles of 16 frames each. Each frame covered a sector of three light beams and allowed for pre-assemble prior to lifting.

There is redundancy that could be noticed on pic below - some of the shorter beams did not require fullsize outer frames. However significant production and assembly efficiency was achieved by using identical frames in upper tier mount.

As a result a model was designed and it was primarily used to manufacture all the mounts but for visualising as well. Having a digital model of the stage and lighting allowed to visualize object, make changes if needed and plan production and assemble beforehand.

Some assembly photos and conclusions follow

Project Conclusions:

1. Planning the assembly structure and estimating the parameters beforehand help streamline the design process. I choosed to compose and debug some of the formulas in Excel before implementing them in Fusion 360.
2. While creating a large number of unique components was rather chalenging it was still possible to handle. However it is desirable to estimate project structure in advance with project and tool limitations in mind.
3. Fusion 360 Assembly Joints I relied on worked as intended. Joints are perfect tool to place each part of a parametric assembly where it belongs.
4. If one plans to make a large array of components and use Copy — Paste New to make them unique - it is somewhat correct direction, but it involves some caveats and disruption in parametric model. I can't wait for the Make Unique Component parametric feature, which could help solve such a tasks much easier.
5. A project with 1000 internal components is bit challenging to handle for Fusion 360. There are better approaches to big assemblies than was implemented in this project. However in this case, it was important to be able to work with each part of assembly in place.
6. Recently implemented "Automatic Update" checkbox in the parameter panel — a feature to disable design auto-update after changing parameters — should significantly speed up work with such models. As I had to edit lot of unique components changning one or two parameters in each I had to wait for model rebuild after changing each parameter. If I could change them with auto-update disabled I could easily save several hours or even a day of design time.

The stage design for JESC2022 was a complex and challenging project, but it was also an excellent learning experience.

PS. title photo represents trial performance of Mariam Bigvava, a contestant from Georgia who took third place this year 💗