Thirty Robe BMFL Spots and 20 x Pointes graced the lighting rig this year among other fixtures, all of which were rigged in the Vector Arena, Auckland.
The red carpet came alive with the great and the good of New Zealand's sporting community, 1,400 of whom rocked up for the occasion to see the All Blacks rugby team, cricketers Kane Williamson and Brendon McCullum, golfer Lydia Ko, all Blacks coach Steve Hansen and many more collect their prizes and accolades during a fun and emotion filled evening.
The BMFL Spots were right at the heart of the lighting scheme which in turn was part of an impressive overall event production design produced by Steve Shields for Sky TV.
Simon Garrett and Jeremy Fern headed the design team for Oceania. The process started soon after the previous year's event with ideas being kicked around by Steve and SKY director Eric Lazayres. In early spring these were put on paper and they met again as a larger group which included Halberg Trust CEO Grant McCabe and the event's technical director "Vision", Andrew Mills.
Auckland based Oceania was the first rental company in the country to invest in Robe's BMFL technology, delivered by Australian and New Zealand distributor the ULA Group - and since that time, their 32 x BMFL Spots have been out constantly on a wide variety of jobs.
"This event is a huge deal for our NZ pride," noted Simon "so we really like to pull out all the stops and show what can be achieved on a budget with smart high impact production. It needed to have a WOW factor for everyone's arrival, be unmistakeable to the live audience and with enough depth and definition to ensure interesting shots from all 12 camera angles for the duration of the Awards presentations and broadcast."
Oceania's Jeremy Fern had a lot of input into the show, set and backdrop which comprised projection and LED panels bordered with truss and lighting elements, all centred around a 6m x 12m high tower of 4.5 mm LED rigged in portrait format which split in two to create a presenter entrance on demand.
Flanking this panel were a pair of 24ft 16:9 IMAG projection screens fed by 20k Christie machines, and filling the void beneath were 10 vertical towers clad with 12mm pitch VuePix LED mesh, tapering in size.
The BMFLs "Were a natural fit with high powered LED look as the punch helped frame and join these substantial video elements onstage" explained Simon.
In addition to the 30 x BMFL Spots - dotted around on three V-shaped trusses over the audience with eight on an upstage truss - 20 x Pointes were on the show together with other lights.
Pointes were another fixture ideal for the job - being small, bright and versatile with a large zoom. Here at the Halbergs they highlighted the audience during the awards presentations and created more static backgrounds using a variety of beams, an approach that's fashionable on TV right now.
The grandMA2 console was programmed and operated on the night by Oceania's Joel Stanners who is now taking 16 x BMFL Spots out on a month long arena tour for classical / pop crossover group Sol3 Mio for which he is the LD.
(Jim Evans)
