THE WALL LIVE IN BERLIN 1990

Potzdamer Platz consisted of 25 acres and was a oblong rectangle which widened at one end. Roger's Wall stretched across what was once both East and West Berlin, along the back quarter of the site leaving three quarters of the area for the audience and booths, grandstand and light and sound towers, and the back quarter for the performers, stage crew, catering, wardrobe, props, parking, and television transmission.

The 25 meter (82 foot) high wall stretched 80 meters (591 feet) across the site, each end stepping irregularly down to the ground. Inset into the wall near each end were large rectangular openings for video screens and scrim coverings for the PA. In front ran a long two lane wide forestage, wide and strong enough to take limousines, motorbikes, military trucks and the Marching Band of the Combined Soviet Forces. Two Truck mounted cherry pickers with spotlight gun turrets were located in from of the forestage and two were located behind the wall, forming part of the mechanical choreography.

The cardboard bricks used in the original production of The Wall were not strong enough to support the increased loading of a wall almost twice the height. Polystyrene bricks had been discounted on cost and ecological grounds. But one of the German production assistants, Werner Graf, discovered that they could be made from fire retardant polystyrene foam by the German firm Welkisch Papiergrosshandlung. They manufactured 2500 tongue-and-grooved bricks each measuring 75.5cm X 60cm X 150cm (29w in X 23h in X 59in) and afterwards recycled them as construction insulation. A wall of polystyrene bricks 18 meters (59 feet) high would have blown over unless tied back to some kind of structure. Local regulations insisted that the wall should be able to resist a 40 mph wind Ñ and wind speed were almost that high during rehearsals. Park had decided to use vertical masts as the supports, after discussing a variety of other solutions with engineers Whitby and Bird. Californian construction manager Chris Teuber, proposed using East Berlin builders' hoists with slim triangular lattice truss towers. The wind masts were fixed at 6 meter (20 foot) intervals across the center opening in the wall and painted black to blend with the rest of the set.
The bricks had to be tied back at regular intervals to the wind masts and scaffolding to stabilize them. A fundamental question was how to fix the bricks securely and yet allow a fast progressive collapse. Teuber cam up with the simple solution of tying a piece of cord around a 30-centimeter- (12 inch-) long wooden dowel in the top groove of a brick before the next course was placed on top. The cord was then tied back to the nearest wind mast or scaffolding upright. The 600 bricks of the middle section had to be laid in 47 minutes. The tightly scripted show was controlled by time code. This ensured perfect synchronization of the music, sound effects, live action and television transmission.

The first four courses, up to above head height, were laid by German extras from the stage. Then a 12 meter- (39 foot-) long lintel truss faced with simulated bricks was swung into place, creating and opening. Performers moved through it until it was sealed up at the end of the first half. The upper part of the wall was laid by stage hands working from a bridge rising behind the wall.

Fisher and Park had planned to use scissor lifts for the wall-layers' rising platforms. It turned out that none of sufficient height were available for hire. So a 40 meter- (131 foot-) long bridge was built across the stage behind the central opening. The bridge and lifting towers ere constructed from readily hired components. The 20-ton bridge was lifted by hydraulic motors to provide fine control and reduce noise.
Two 12 meter- (39 foot-) high PA towers were located behind the wall on either side of the stage, disguised by acoustically transparent brick courses. Two big video screens were positioned on either side of them. Behind the PA were four levels of scaffolding platforms for brick storage. The two inflatables were stored on platforms behind the top of the wall on each side.

The band played on a stage behind the wall. Behind them, under a roof, was tiered staging for the 80-piece East Berlin Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and the 150-person East Berlin Radio Choir. The bottom of the 15.2 meter (50 foot) diameter circular back projection screen aligned with the front edge of this roof. The projection screen frame was supported by an elaborate scaffolding on either side. Behind the choir was the tower for the 70 millimeter (2 w in.) Cine projector focused on the back of the circular screen.

On either side of the stage, built into the scaffolding supporting the brick storage, were two 50 meter- (164 foot) high tower cranes with 30 meter- (98 foot) jibs. A mobile telescopic crane was parked behind on stage left. The cranes were used to fly in sextons of the wall, support the Teacher puppet inflatable, and, in the second half, to raise a 40 meter- (131 foot) long lighting truss above the front of the wall. Instead of the puppet of the first wall, the Mother was now a Scarfe cartoon painted on the translucent covering of a light box.

Waters had made some minor changes for the new performance: adding or dropping a song, extending some instrumental sections and having arrangements written for new live backing orchestra and choir. In 1979-80, The Wall had been a milestone in the staging of live rock shows. But with an undemonstrative band, long idiosyncratic guitar improvisations and projected animation in place of strutting performers, it was not good television. The Berlin version was to be watched by a live audience of more than 250,000 people and broadcast live to thirty-five countries to an estimated half billion people. The cameras needed continuous live action. In addition, the Potzdamer Platz site called for a set twice the size of the original. This all meant that, to keep the continued attention of both television and live audiences, there would have to be a shift in scale both physically and in terms of action: the storyline had to be strengthened into a clear narrative with an unambiguous message. Fisher and Park had already roughed out several ideas for changes to the set, notably the hotel room scene. This was now located in a three-dimensional hotel room set high in the wall, hidden until the beginning of the scene by a brick-painted lift-up flap.

Scarfe's images had been designed to suit the scale of the original arena performances. The original Mother inflatable was replaced by a Mother brick, a large light box concealing a Scarfe cartoon which fitted into a triangular notch in the top of the wall. To save costs and cope with the doubled scale, the Pig was redesigned as a monster head to break through the top of the wall, its spotlight eyes glowering over the audience. Gerald Scarfe drew a new cartoon and sculptor Paul Wright created the 1:12 scale model for fabrication as an inflatable by Rob Harries' Air Artists. The size of a five-story house, the Pig was painted by Keith Payne in one of the pre-war airship hangers at Cardington.

Fisher and Park wanted to strengthen the narrative to make the show read as a more contemporary event and to give it more of their own style. They wanted a new strength and toughness and worked with the design group 4i to produce the new graphic images.

The feeling of the 4i designs was in strong contrast to Scarfe's quirky scratchy line work and sharp violence: the scale of Potzdamer Platz called for less subtlety. The new graphics were mostly symbolic rather than literal Ñ thick, heavy, simple, relentless and frequently distressed with cracked and broken edges. They worked well with the Scarfe imagery and were immensely strong when they were used in their own right. During the first half, graphics were mostly back projected upon the circular screen. With various lighting effects projected upon the wall. But during the second half, after the wall was completed and stretched across the entire stage, graphics were projected across the entire length of the mammoth wall. It worked well as a huge broad screen.

An abstract, nightmarish, ravaged cityscape projected across the wall during the hotel room scene, the somber list of names of the dead which spread across the wall and turned into a field of crosses and the 13 meter (43 foot) high by 150 meter (492 foot) wide phrase "Bring The Boys Back Home," which came across with uncompromising force both live and on television.

The Helvetica Bold Condensed font type of 'Bring the Boys Back Home' had never before been used on this scale. It was computer generated, printed out, distorted and copied many times before being hand painted and turned into projection transparencies.

Among Scarfe characters and drawings, many other graphics were used; images which were montaged from press cuttings of a variety of twentieth-century conflicts, as Roger sung Vera, 4i cartoons portraying the overseas operator, projections of real Berlin Wall graffiti which were selected from photographs and montaged together, images of fascist architecture were distressed and montaged for projections during the rally scene, among others.

The rally and trial had originally been illustrated by large-scale projected movie animation's by Gerald Scarfe. Like the rest of the Scarfe graphic imprint, they would remain a fundamental element in the performance, augmented by additional footage some of it from the film of The Wall. But with an under-occupied Soviet army still resident in the city, Waters was enthusiastic about turning he rally into a live choreography of Russian tanks and soldiers. The local Soviet army command balked at tanks, but hiring troop carriers, General's jeeps and military marching bands turned out to by a matter of amicable negotiation with them. Anxious to foster artistic collaboration between the newly united countries, the radio orchestra and choir and many extras and crew were hired from East Berlin.

The trial sequence was reworked as a long vignette played by a group of star actors in fantastic Scarfian costumes: musician Thomas Dolby was dangled down the wall in a flying harness wearing a twice life-size costume modeled on that of the (puppet) Teacher. Albert Finney wore a heavily padded judges costume for the trial scene.
The extras were ranged along platforms on the scaffolding wings and the 15 brick-layers positioned on the long bridge. At the cure the bridge began to descend and the bricklayers progressively pushed off each succeeding course in a great cascade. Because of the need to conserve the relatively fragile bricks there had been only two partial demolition's before the show Ñ although there had been many wall-building rehearsals.

The Wall had been created in only two-and-a-half months, with access to the Potzdamer Platz site for only the last four weeks. By normal rock show standards that was an impossibly tight schedule: ideas, mechanisms, choreography, lighting, pyrotechnics, sound and logistics had all to be tested out and co-ordinated.
http://www.rogerwaters.org/about_berlin.html