For the first event, The Publican Awards, Blitz was commissioned by H2 Business Communication's Anthony Chilton, to provide the technical expertise for an event which played to a capacity crowd for dinner - some 1800 seated guests. Due to the large audience the stage was just 10' x 10' and the set included four new Panasonic projectors, projecting on to a cuboid 'Boxing Ring' consisting of four 14' x 7'6"' screens suspended from truss in the centre of the room. Blitz also provided audio equipment and operating crew to complement the in-house kit. Rigging started at 4am on the day of the event and had to be completed by 7pm and then de-rigged over night, in order to be ready for the next event, The Design Week Awards, the first of two events for Centaur Publishing, and a hat-trick of events produced by Peter Cook Events.
The turnaround for The Design Week Awards involved changing the four screens flown in the centre of the room to a three projector wide screen. Simon Cox, chief engineer of Blitz Vision says: "Logistically once the first change was completed, the rest were straight forward as all three shows used the same screen size and technology." The system comprised of a 48'10 X 10' widescreen being projected via three Barco R12+, and three Panasonic -D7700E projectors, fed via a three screen Encore rig. Cox says: "Indeed the change between the three shows was primarily software rather than hardware. However it is notable that widescreen is now becoming a viable option with award events where as a few years ago it would be regarded as too complex to install in short time scales. Blitz has pioneered widescreen technology and is therefore familiar with what can be achieved in the time given.
"But the really clever bit was the use of our fiberoptics system for transmission of high resolution graphics over long distances. The benefit of fiberoptic transmission over more conventional systems is that optical transmission is almost instant with no delay, no signal deterioration and more importantly no mains induced noise."
The final event, the IVCA is an industry awards dinner which Blitz supports annually providing the technical staging.
Blitz also had a major input to the graphics for two of the four events. Blitz supplied and operated a three screen Watchout system for the Money Marketing & Design Week Awards, with the graphic creation being supplied by 1st Image.
Paul Hutton, managing director of Blitz Communications says: "The four day marathon event was an enormous success and a credit to the crew on the ground. It's great to see widescreen so heartily adopted by the awards industry. It is also important to see that our creative approach to technology is enabling us to deliver a consistently improving customer experience - as evidenced by the development of our fibre optic transmission systems."
(Chris Henry)
