Star Trek premiere in Berlin: Neumann&Müller designed the rigging at the Sony Center

"As if the Enterprise had landed in the middle of Berlin" - that was the headline over the Morgenpost article on the premiere celebrating the 12th part of film series in Berlin at the end of April. All of the leading cast members and their director appeared in front of fans and photographers in the Sony Center's futuristically designed Forum. A whole host of guests greeted the cameras in typical Spock fashion on the black carpet as well as on the three photo stages, which resembled the starship Enterprise's famous holodeck.

Over 60 "Arrisun" daylight spotlights, installed on trusses eight metres above the ground, provided homogenous lighting of the set and of the photo walls in particular. N&M's Berlin team, under production managers Timo Pforr and Pietro Marcandella, had begun with the complex rigging in front of the Cinestar cinema one week earlier. As Timo Pforr explained: "The crest of the Sony Center roof is 42 metres high and the height of the roof ring beams varies between 45 and 49 metres – a constellation that called for very special rigging techniques."

The Forum at Potsdamer Platz is situated under a unique roof construction resting on several different building, which meant that 14 suspension points had to be installed for the trusses at a height of ten metres. Each of the bridles was between 40 and 90 metres long; a total of 1.8 kilometres of steel cable was installed under the roof. Pietro Marcandella added: "As the legs were so long, the weight of the cable itself and the resulting cable sag had to be taken into account in the bridle calculation for each load." If the suspension point is then loaded with the predefined equipment, this then moves into the previously calculated position. "We used a piece of software we developed ourselves for the extensive calculations in the planning phase, then we checked the plausibility with a 3D CAD model," the two project managers revealed, adding that they also determined the ideal rigging sequence during the planning stage so that the routing of the steel cable could be realized in accordance with the static calculations.

N&M's specialists were engaged to plan and realise the lighting and sound by "chest of wonders", a full-service agency from Berlin. This firm of entertainment professionals is also the lead agency of Paramount Pictures, developing and realising events and marketing concepts at both national and international level. The N&M team only had a limited amount of time during the night to carry out the extremely complicated set-up. They also had to take special safety and noise-prevention measures to avoid damaging the glass facade of the building and to keep the inconvenience to local residents to a minimum.

Once the credits to "Into Darkness" had finished rolling, the premiere audience crowded back under the roof of the Sony Center – and entered into a magnificent setting: lighting and fog effects helped fans and visitors experience a simulated starship landing. Using "Clay Paky Sharpy" and "Roadie X-Stream" fog machines, the N&M team made sure that the "Star Trek" atmosphere from the cinema carried on in the Forum long after the film was over.