JOHANNESBURG – Gearhouse South Africa supplied design and technical production – including rigging, lighting, visuals, AV, set and audio – to the 2010 Annual Bidvest Chairman's Awards, a high-profile corporate events, staged at Sandton Convention Center (SCC). Tim Dunn designed the set, visuals and lighting to conform to the feminine "Bidvest Eve" theme for the three-day event, including its curvaceous, completely white 73 meter-wide set with multiple synchronized revolves and with a sweeping spiral staircases as its centerpiece.
This was Dunn's fourth year working on Bidvest. He collaborated with show directors and co-producers David Bloch and Debbie Rakusin on the event, which featured numerous live performers and a fashion show in addition to the gala dinners for 1,000 international guests each night.
Gearhouse's set building specialists SDS, led by Pieter Joubert and Craig Pretorius, dealt with two fewer days of build-time compared with previous Bidvest events.
The main performance stage was an 18-meter revolve supplied by Gearhouse In2structures, topped by two 7.8-meter revolves, each with a spiral staircase measuring 3 meters wide by 3.1 meters high.
These spiral staircases linked to a static central staircase, so all pieces needed to be aligned at the required moments. The revolves were used for artist and presenter entrances and exits and for the numerous scene changes running throughout the event.
The main stage was flanked with two 18-by-4-meter secondary stages; each featuring a set Romanesque columns at the back. A 6-by-24-meter white sharkstooth gauze was stretched between the headers of theses pillars and the center stage area, front-lit for visual depth and dimensionality, and backed with a 24-by-6-meter LED starcloth.
A large U-shaped fashion ramp/runway curved out from the stage into the front section of the audience, which was seated on an 1,800 square meter seating platform, so the performers could get close up and interact with the guests. The ramp was finished in a high gloss Marley.
Three printed oval screens were suspended above the center revolve, each angled backwards and edged by an integral printed "3D" picture frame. Dunn commissioned the Gearhouse Media team to create special AV content and masks that made these "windows" constantly shifting 3D visual illusions. Left and right of the main stage were two 10-by-7 meter 16:9 format projection screens, used for I-Mag footage, with the same printed effect as the oval center screens.
Suspended over the audience were seven chandeliers swagged in silks and internally lit, designed and built by SDS, which functioned as house lights.
The lighting rig for the matte white painted set, hung on a series of trusses flown from the roof by the Gearhouse Rigging team led by Kendall Dixon, was dominated by energy-efficient LED fixtures. There were 186 rigging points in the roof and 96 motors.
The relatively spare number of multi-functional fixtures chosen to light the large space included 42 Robe REDWash 3•192 LED wash lights, 24 Vari*Lite VLXs, 14 i-Pix BB4s and 108 i-Pix Satellites, 48 LED PARs and 24 Robe CitySkape48s. The only discharge light sources were 38 Martin MAC 2000 Profile moving lights.
With video scenery in the mix, the lighting design needed to achieve the right balance in visual intensity.
The VLXs were positioned upstage and used for back lighting and also for most of the show's key lighting. The REDWashes toned the set with a wide spectrum of colors, from subtle pastels to bold saturates. The MAC 2000s – also the only fixture with a gobo – were used for beamy looks and specials.
The i-Pix satellites were used to uplight the columns and the ceiling cloths, while the BB4s and CitySkapes lifted the gauzes in front of the starcloth and behind the pillars. Sixty ETC Source Four PARs were used to light the stair ramps, and Griven Colorados were positioned to up-light the chandeliers from the floor, highlighting their lavish silk draping. The chandeliers were also internally lit with LED PARs, their reflected light bouncing around the room.
Dunn programmed and ran the show on an MA Lighting grandMA full size console, with another for backup, running on a fiber network. He worked closely with lighting director Hugh Turner and with Marcel Wijnberger and Chris Grandin from Gearhouse media, all of whom comprised his FOH team.
The Bidvest Chairman's Awards was a video intensive show, with pre-recorded playback, ambient content and I-Mag running throughout the three-hour performances.
Grandin operated a Wings system, which consisted of three slave servers triggered by one master, which stored all the timecode-based show playback tracks. Video content for the oval screens was stored on two grandMA VPUs triggered from Dunn's grandMA console. All these, together with additional playback footage on a Grass Valley Turbo hard drive – were fed into the Christie Vista Spyder X20 switcher operated by Grandin and output to screen.
The oval screens primarily featured atmospheric content – including natural elements like clouds, stars, the moon, waterfalls – edited for the show from Gearhouse Media's stock extensive library. It was compiled by Dunn and Wijnberger over about five days once they knew the format and running order of the show, which was in three acts – Fashion, Jewels and then the Bidvest Eve show complete with live performers.
The screens were all run in full HD, fed by projectors mounted on the roof trusses – the side screens each via double stack of Christie 18Ks and the oval screens with three double stacks of Christie 10Ks. Christie's "Twist" software was used to warp the oval screen content into the correct perspective. They were also all lined up wirelessly using Christie Road Tools, which was physically very practical and saved large amounts of time. The projection system was run over a fiber cable to the Spyder.
Cameras and an OB truck were supplied – as a completely different entity – by Obeco – who sent a TX camera to the Wings system for outputting primarily to the side screens. Playback content appeared throughout the show on the oval screens and sometimes on the sides.
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