Staged in The Brighton Centre, the Sixth Sense team adhered to Unilever UK Foods corporate guidelines and conveyed Unilever's messages in a celebratory, informative and entertaining way to 650 members of staff from Crawley and factory sites across the UK. The presentation environment was set in the round, which promoted audience interaction and afforded clear sightlines and maximum impact of the speaker support system.
Using an 'octagon' layout measuring 25m wall to wall, the set comprised a central stage measuring 9.7m square and four 10m long catwalks (providing speaker and performer entrances and exits). Blackout's team, headed by MD Steve Tuck and project manager Ken Nock, designed and supplied over 400m of Thomas truss, which was rigged to create a room within a room. A surrounding octagon-shaped truss measuring 30m by 30m provided the support for over 120m of black drape and 12 giant projection screens measuring 17m wide, which were supplied by Pro Stage Europe Ltd and strategically rigged on site by Blackout.
Additionally, Blackout supplied an inner truss measuring 25m by 6sq.m, which was attached to the perimeter truss. This provided all the positions for the lighting, designed by Mike Townsend and supplied by Visual Elements and PRG. It also provided the structure to support the Meyer sound rig incorporating 6.1 surround sound, designed by Adrian Bradley of TSS and supplied by Canegreen Commercial. Featuring stunning "speaker support" visuals and animated sequences, the sophisticated presentation was delivered via Dataton's Watchout system, designed and supplied by Concise.
Working closely with Phil O'Brien and Rachel Gunderson from Concise, Sixth Sense maximised Watchout to project stunning speaker support visuals throughout, commencing with a sensational "opener" which animated all the brands in the Unilever UK Foods portfolio.
For the first time Sixth Sense incorporated a virtual presenter, which was chroma keyed over the speaker support. This injected an element of humour and audience interaction - featuring the ability via spycams to single people out in the audience and talk directly to them. Sixth Sense UK's production manager, Cliff Zenker commented: "Once again Blackout was attentive and detailed during the pre production period and provided an excellent crew on site."
(Lee Baldock)
