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fundraise enough together to ask Mark if I could be his apprentice. I ended up travelling around with Mark for half a year. We went to Las Vegas and I worked with him on the big Cirque du Soleil show. I was also with him for the Brit Awards. It truly was the best time of my life. Then, one day, he came to me and said, ‘You know what? If I give you a week to go back to Denmark and pack all your things, can I put you on payroll?’ I worked with Mark for over six years. I was the third designer to join the company – it was a very little studio at that time. Being able to work with Mark, Ray and Adrian (who was the leading animator) and learn their skills was such a privilege. Every day was a fantastic journey – so inspiring and exciting. Back then, I was designing for the Brit Awards, National Television Awards, Take That and Pink, among lots of other music shows. But I always wanted to have my own business; that was my end game. In 2011, I set out to start my own business. In the last couple of years with Mark, I had been doing more and more creative direction, despite the fact my background was in production design. I felt there needed to be a more holistic approach to shows, where there could be more dialogue about how the screens are laid out. I was interested in learning not just how to create a set, but also screen designs that work with the set – and how we could extend the design – so we didn’t know where the border between stage and screen was. Could you discuss one of the most technically challenging projects you’ve ever worked on? One of the more interesting and particularly challenging projects was Eurovision back in 2014. I was the creative director and content producer for all 37 delegations that year and we became involved quite late in the process. Part of my contract was to visualise what would happen with the design – as we do that well in our studio. We had a 100m LED screen in the back and an interactive LED floor. Between that there was a transparent projection screen and if you sent an electric current through it, it closed. Then there was a big 3D grid, which effectively was a 3D LED installation. I believe that was the winner of the show. I worked closely with Chris Plant for this, who specialises in 3D installation work. Each element presented its own challenges, but to make them all work together was even more difficult. The projection gave us another technical challenge in that it wasn’t a projection surface, so there was nowhere near enough light reflecting from it to give us the lighting levels we wanted. That year, we created every single country’s stage design, making it the hardest job I’ve ever done by myself at that point. In the end, that year brought in almost 200 million viewers.
WATCH ME Dami Am’s stunning performance from 2016
We work both in creative direction and design, as well as the show direction space – and we’ve sort of fused the two together. I began by doing what I have always done: music and entertainment shows as well as award shows. Then, suddenly, I got a call from an esports company. I said: ‘Why are you calling me? I don’t know anything about esports.’ To which they replied: ‘No, but you know how to create award shows and big live experiences.’ So now our client base is a lot wider than it used to be. Working with these big esports projects presents different challenges. You want to give a live experience which can emulate the gaming universe that people are used to from sitting in their rooms at home. I’ve also been working with big event companies like Jack Morton, where I Avoiding problems on site where time is very limited makes pre- production key”
worked on a Samsung launch as show director in New York. Moving from music into the agencies and seeing that there was a whole other talent mass has just been amazing. I also love that work because I suppose rock ’n’ roll is a little bit more entrepreneurial: you just work as fast as you can to solve each problem. What is the process your team goes through when starting a new project? Usually, it’s about having a meeting, understanding exactly what’s required and making sure that we are the very best people for the job. These days, the process is so short. You literally get the phone call and expect to start work on it the next day. My work is very visual contracts based, which means we will start with learning exactly what the client wants to say and
Can you tell us more about your company, Rockart Design?
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