08/10/2015
AMP VISUAL TV present for the opening of the new Suez Canal.
Thursday 6 August 2015 was a historic date for Egypt and international trade, with the opening of a new channel in the Suez Canal. Agence Publics entrusted AMP VISUAL TV with providing international TV coverage of the opening ceremony attended by several Heads of State, including the French president François Hollande. We were also chosen to film the enactment of Aida at the gala closing ceremony. We deployed a unique televisual facility for a project that was Pharaonic in scale.
The opening ceremony was an event for the whole country. Several Heads of State were invited to attend the festivities, including the guest of honour François Hollande. AMP VISUAL TV put in weeks of hard work to overcome the many challenges of filming the ceremony, and the television facilities that we provided were indeed as unique as they were unprecedented. AMP VISUAL TV deployed over 30 cameras along more than 10km of the canal's banks, on the presidential boat, along the route of the presidential motorcade, and at the destination for the reception. An army helicopter was fitted with a gyro-stabilised camera to provide unique aerial footage. The project's scale meant that we had to use a number of wireless RF cameras. A fibre optic circuit of some 20km was needed for the complex task of managing all of these RF connections and the numerous cameras. These fibre optics, buried on-site for the occasion, were connected to one of AMP VISUAL TV's largest OB Trucks (the Millénium Signature 10), where Gilles Amado directed the production.
The festivities concluded with an enactment of Verdi's Aida, an opera that was initially commissioned by Princess Eugenie for the original Suez Canal opening ceremony in 1869, but was not finished on time. Footage was provided by AMP VISUAL TV teams and a mobile studio brought in for the occasion.
A flight-case control room broadcasting facility, made up of three trucks including AMP VISUAL TV's largest OB truck, was shipped to Egypt by air and sea especially for this historic event. The facilities were operated by over 100 AMP VISUAL TV technicians, who produced sterling work in a particularly trying context given the security issues at events of this scale.
A second channel was constructed, running parallel to the existing Suez Canal along 72km, in an amazing technical feat which was completed in less than a year. This will reduce the transit time for boats by half, with the hope of doubling traffic and therefore Egypt's income within the next ten or so years.
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