Special Projects

‘The Book ‘ was one of four moving props we manufactured for the Paralympic opening ceremony. The idea was for two athletes to be atop of large moving ‘ roladex’ type structure that constantly rotated the pages of the declaration of human rights.

The designer wanted to get Freddie Mercury into the show, to get the crowd going, and what better way to do this than project his image onto 4, 6.5 metre x 3.6 metre projection screens, which were then to be fitted to the back of 4 x three and a half tonne tipper trucks!

“We need a stage for the acts to perform on. Can you make it in time “, was the call from the production manager and was in the middle of all the other work we were doing for the closing ceremony.

“Can you make a set piece to fly Darcey Bussell from the roof of the stadium to the centre of the field of play?” No pressure for us then!

The brief was to provide a scale size model emulating the look of the Gherkin with the ‘twist’ that a number of trapeze artists would run around it and jump through it.

The model of St Pauls Cathedral was the second of the ‘Waterloo Sunset’ pieces for the London 2012 closing ceremony.

Chris Vaughan awarded us the contract to manufacture a scale model of that classic London landmark, Big Ben, or the Elizabeth tower, as it is now formally known.

Dan Shipton, from London 2012 Ceremonies, gave us our first Olympic order which was for a 15 metre long galleon to be used in the Closing Ceremony. The design was to be based on a long boat and had to be pushed around by 16 persons inside the hull.

Remember these ? Total Solutions manufactured the ‘Olympic rings and supporting grid’ for Stage One who then wove there magic to hang them off Tower Bridge.