LONDON – Event production specialist Maestra London worked with set and staging company Firecracker to support ‘Reply Exchange,’ a one-day conference sponsored by Italian IT giants Reply SpA. Gruppo Peroni staged the event and Toria Richardson was the event’s producer. The event was held in London’s 155 Bishopsgate venue. Along with a large conference space, attendees met in three breakout areas and at an exhibition section.
More details from Maestra (www.maestra-group.com):
Maestra’s team was led by project manager Jack Jury, and one of the challenges was using some of the venue’s own technical equipment and seamlessly combining that with the additional kit supplied by Maestra … as time was tight. Much attention to detail was required to achieve the specific desired aesthetic.
In the main conference area, the house projectors were used, together with one of Maestra’s Analog Way Di-VentiX II mixer / scalers which integrate four show laptops to the system, two running Keynote for presentations and two running PlaybackPro for playback video content.
The exhibition area was divided into five large pods, constructed to illustrate the different areas of work in which Reply engage, with each pod dedicated to specific types of products, accommodating 22 different exhibitors.
For each of the five stands, Maestra provided 55 and 65 inch LED screens and each exhibitor also had their own 27 inch monitor inbuilt into the stand. The individual exhibitors could hook up their own laptops – housed in a purpose built cupboard also part of the stand design – which showed their specific product or promo material. Maestra supplied a range of switchers and a matrix so footage could appear on the large screens.
As much of 155 Bishopsgate’s existing lighting was incorporated into the design as possible, with Maestra adding 90 x CORE ColourPoint Mk2 battery powered wireless LED uplighters – supplied by Wireless Lighting – which were deployed around the conference spaces, dramatically coloring the walls.
Twenty-four of these extremely handy fixtures grazed up the walls of the main conference space, with 12 in each of the breakout areas and the rest dotted around the venue, adding color and texture to the ‘blank’ spaces plus general depth and warmth.
Each of the exhibition pods featured a slick neon sign announcing the discipline / field of the content and additional ColourPoint 2s were used to replicate the color and feel of these signs around the individual pods. The fixtures were run in master/slave mode for quick and easy tweaking of colors as and when needed.
“We all worked hard to achieve the really high level of finishing and detail demanded by the end client in the available time and there was some great teamwork with the Firecracker crew,” says Jack, who was joined by 12 crew from Maestra for the task, which had a two day build period, one show day and then out that same evening. Everyone was delighted with the results.
