Saturday 7th April marked the official launch of the new Titanic Belfast building in the heart of Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. Although the building had already been open for a week, a light show on the 7th marked the official opening. This was the first Titanic related activity of the year that PastieBap attended and to be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew for sure that there would be lights and I hoped that there would be fireworks. Belfast definitely didn’t disappoint; there were lights and fireworks aplenty.
This was my first time seeing the £97 million Titanic Building up close and it really is breathtaking. Situated on Queen’s Island, the building houses the world’s largest Titanic exhibition and is 14, 00 sq.m. – twice the size of Belfast’s City Hall. Its unique architectural design is comprised of 3,000 individual silver anodised aluminium shards across its external façade that is built to replicate four 90ft hulls. The building is surrounded by reflective pools of water to complete the illusion of a stately ship looming over Belfast’s horizon.
Noel Molloy, project manager for Titanic Belfast thinks that Queen’s Island is the perfect spot for this revolutionary new building. “That’s where she was built. That’s where she was designed. That’s where the workers lived.” The scale of this building mimics the actual size of the ship and is 100ft from where the Titanic was built, with the drawing office to the right, to the left is the river Lagan where the Titanic was launched and to the south is where the shipyard’s workers lived.Everything about the night of the light show seemed exceptionally well organised, with portaloos being supplied, ample security and there certainly wasn’t much bother despite the assumed 30,000 person attendance. The tickets for the show were free and audience members were assigned to one of three viewing locations based around the slipways with different coloured armbands marking the different areas.
Gates opened at 8pm, and the show was scheduled to start at 9pm, with stalls being set up selling crafts and food and a few fairground rides for the kids were also there to add to the carnival-esque atmosphere. The excitement was palpable and with the weather staying dry everybody seemed in high spirits as they anticipated the event.
The light show itself started about 20 past 9, a little off schedule as they had to wait for complete darkness before it could begin. So at 9.20pm on the 7th April the music began and so did the much anticipated Titanic Light Show. The first five minutes or so simply consisted of a few spot lights being shone on the building with silhouettes of the Harland & Wolff cranes and other Belfast landmarks. This wasn’t quite the electric start that everyone was expecting and it lasted far too long – you could actually hear the crowd becoming restless as the noise of their chatter rose above the classical music being played. However, after the initial 5 minutes of disappointment the fireworks began in tandem to the lights and the show really kicked off as several flares were set alight from the top of the building. The lights themselves were projected directly onto the Titanic Belfast and used images and fireworks to tell the story of the Titanic from her construction at Harland & Wolff (showing girders and cogs rotating) to her eventual sinking to the bottom of the ocean (seaweed and scene of the wreckage).
Overall the show was extremely impressive, with the images being simultaneously projected onto all sides of the building. The show was far longer than the usual projection-mapping show (which usually last around 5 – 10 minutes) as it lasted approximately 40 minutes in total. With a show this long you would assume that keeping the audience’s interest would be hard, but somehow they managed to do it, with the crowd staying silent and awestruck practically the whole time. As the show ended the crowds filed out, still no trouble or problem considering the 30,000 attendance. There was also a free shuttle bus service being run from Titanic Belfast into the centre of Belfast and the queue for this showed just how popular the show must have been. Although the queues were long, the wait was bearable what with the highly charged atmosphere and the collective feeling that this was Belfast rising from the not so proverbial ashes, showing all that it’s got – announcing that once and for all, it’s back.
