The Story Behind Argon Animation - by Tim Bennett - Part 2

One door closes another opens…

As I walked away from the bar, I was sad…

Two years of hard work and a lot of fun, but I didn’t have much to show for it…

But in my hands I had this small 100mw laser and I didn’t realize it at the time…

It was the greatest gift I could ever have been given!

So I started contacting small clubs and offering my services and got myself a couple of nice projects...

I even did the launch for Snap with their song “You Got The Power” in a small club in London in 1990.

And then a friend of mine asked me if I could attend a meeting for him to see about buying a laser…

So I found a company based in Hammersmith in London and went to visit them and that’s when I saw my first full color professional laser show and sat in a meeting that would again completely change my life…

The Salesman (his name was Mark) made a comment about them having a project in 1992 in Sevilla for the World Expo and how they were struggling to find staff to go because all of their staff had obstacles in going…

I thought it was strange, because to go to Spain for 1 year, on an all expenses paid trip to do a show sounded like a lot of fun!

So I offered to go…

Mark asked the Managing Director of the company if she would talk to me and she asked me:

Do you know anything about lasers?

I said “no not really…”

She asked if I knew anything about event management and show production…

I said “no not really…”

She asked me if I knew anything about programming lighting equipment…

I said “no not really…”

She asked “then why the hell would we send you?”

I said “Because I can go!”

And so I found myself starting work with them the next week on 1st October 1991 and early March 1992, I was driving their truck down to Sevilla with a load of equipment to start setting up, what would be The Espectaculo Del Lago.

I remember arriving and standing on the side of the lake thinking… “Me and my big Mouth!”

You can see part of the show here: https://www.argonanimation.com/water-projections-expo-92-sevilla-part-1/

The show was a massive success, millions of people came to visit and the show was the center piece and I was part of this incredible team that ran the show twice a night for over 6 months…

It was incredible on the job training, the like I could never have gotten elsewhere and an experience that even today makes me smile and feel so grateful!

It was incredible for me to think, that just a few years earlier, I had been a failed high school grad, cleaning windows and here I was now part of the team that was running one of the world’s biggest shows…

It shows what passion can do !

Argon Animation Inc was still a long long way away, but what happened was that I got to work and be trained by some of the very best people in the show world on a scale of competence that very few people ever get the chance to do...

And remember this Expo 92 show, as it will come back many years in the future as another part of this story…

Tim Bennett

Managing Director

Argon Animation Inc

https://www.argonanimation.com