Hog 4 on the Team at the 2016 Rio Olympics

	The Opening and Closing ceremonies of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were programmed on a High End Systems' Hog 4.

For the recent (and epic) opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, programming ace Ross Williams was once again on hand with his trusty High End Systems Hog 4 console to assist in the coordination of the massive lighting displays. Lighting design for the 31st Olympiad opening and closing ceremonies, the first to be held in South America, was by Durham Marenghi, assisted by Joyce Drummond. Agora was the lighting equipment supplier.

Williams comments, "Rio was my third Olympics on a Whole Hog family console, having been a part of the programming teams for Sochi (Hog 4) and Turin (Hog 3) previously. This time I joined Andrew Voller and Paulinho Lebrão for the 2016 Opening Ceremony, returning with Andy for the closing. Once again we proved that multiple console types can co-exist happily on a large-scale production, with all data merging via Art-Net. For me the obvious choice of console was the Hog 4, which performed its duty quite unremarkably if I'm honest. While not headline grabbing, this truly is a testament of how stable the OS has become, and how far the feature set has evolved."

Williams says that the import cue-list feature, released last December, is worthy of a special mention and was a great time-saver on this show. He explains, "Each programmer 'attacked' a segment of the show, breaking down music and choreography notation within InqScribe. The resulting data was formatted via Andrew Voller's excellent Moving Light Assistant software and imported as an XML file straight into the relevant Hog 4 cue lists, complete with all associated timecode trigger points, cue numbers and cue descriptions pre-populated. Not only did this save considerable time, it also ensured we were all synchronized with cue numbers and trigger points. I was impressed with the way you could import newly updated cue information without disrupting other show segments, something I was a little nervous of initially; such concerns proved unfounded however. Yet again a brilliantly useful feature superbly implemented."