And if that all sounds too crazy for words, the logistics and systems to make this event happen were equally complex. An annual showcase of UKTV's new season shows, the event needed to be slick, exciting and wired with the latest technology. Cue Broadsword, a full service technical event company, who helped UKTV launch its upcoming programmes to the industry for the third year running, partnering with producers Momentum Events.
This year, the event was held at the Phillips Gallery in London. The open-plan venue was the perfect place to offer live stage shows coupled with lounge areas and exhibition booths. Key to this was using the space effectively so that each of the four live areas could be reset while another was going live, as well as having room for the activities happening between acts.
"We decided to control all of the main areas from one central position," explains Martin Walton, creative director at Broadsword. "This meant devising a system that could run nine separate video and audio feeds at once; incorporating show reels, presentation slides, live tweets, auto-cue and live camera images - all of which had to start and stop at specific times and be broadcast to several different areas.
"We used our Dataton Watchout presentation system to give us the quality and flexibility we needed and it performed brilliantly as always, coupled with our great team of technicians of course."
Acts included Dynamo, Katherine Mills, Ross Noble, Dave Gorman, David Attenborough and a collection of live animals, David Hasselhoff, Ben Miller, Simon Callow, a cake demonstration from Choccywoccydoodah and an auction from the Storage Hunters team - all introduced live by the voice of Redd Pepper aka Voiceover Man.
(Jim Evans)
