La Série Montréal – Québec at the Verdun Auditorium

Daniel Belliveau: La Série Montréal-Québec, that was a really particular event for me. It was large scale from a technical standpoint. Just for HD TV, we had to add 60 lights above the skating rink. Now, I have 53 lights. I had to add 70 lights over the skating rink to get a [white] ice on HD TV, because with only 53 lights of 1,000 watts on the ceiling, I get a grey-looking ice. With seventy more lights, of 1,000 watts: I get 70,000 more watts of light, The result is I really get a glowing white ice. So, to install that, I needed generators outside in addition to my amperage that I have here in my building.

I had to work also within certain time frames, because here, there was an Atom tournament. One year, we had the Atom tournament. So, we had to not disturb that and, to manage doing our event in only one night. And the following year, we had the Montréal Juniors. The Montréal Juniors who were sponsored by Telus. That means, when we presented the hockey game of La Série Québec-Montréal, we had to scratch off the logos of the skating rink, to change the logos and put Vidéotron logos. And I remember that one night, there were 70 technicians who were working here, and there were 3 lifting platforms, a crane and also a Zamboni on the skating rink at the same time. All that because of the schedules we had, with very, very, very limited time frames. So as not to interfere with the hockey game.

Anne-Marie Belleau: What did you have to build for the production?

Daniel Belliveau: We had to build a media platform. We built it on the skating rink and, afterward, we had brought into the Auditorium a crane so we could carry it into the stands.