Canegreen Commercial was tasked with ensuring speech and music could be heard by a room full of loud (and possibly drunk!) rock 'n' roll stars. Andrew Frengley, MD of Canegreen Commercial, designed and co-ordinated the system set up for the show's event director Paul Corrick of production company, Reality, the pair having worked together on numerous projects in the past, including last year's NME Awards. Corrick commented: "Andrews' ability to solve problems made Canegreen Commercial the obvious choice to ensure we had a PA that reached all of the guests with sufficient volume to hold their attention as the background noise at this event can reach incredible levels."
A logistical challenge at this year's event was the tight schedule for the production crew. A concert had been scheduled for the following evening featuring one of the Award winners - Jet. To accommodate this, Frengley liaised with Jet's sound company Britannia Row to utilize their Turbosound Flashlight System. This formed the main stereo system for the music and was augmented with additional equipment for the awards night. To carry the speech and playback, Turbosound 440s were flown in the ceiling of the venue, with three Turbosound 310s as front-fills and additional 440s in the VIP bar to complete the set up. Due to the asymmetrical shape of the venue and audience positioning, Canegreen Commercial's engineer, Richard Brooker, had to set eight delays across the system, using BSS Omnidrives.
Two Heritage 3000 Midas front-of-house desks and a third one used as a monitor board were installed by Canegreen Commercial. One controlled the sound for the live performances with Jay Van Leishout and Wayne 'Rabbit' Sargeant behind the desk, while Richard Brooker controlled the speeches, CD and video playbacks board across the evening.
Creative Technology created an eye-catching geometrically-'sculptured' multi-screen backdrop for the Awards. Providing screen reinforcement for the second year running, CT was contracted by Reality to deliver a plasma solution to implement the latter's imaginative set design. "Reality came up with the idea of using a series of plasma screens, positioned at different angles and cascading downwards," explained CT project manager Mark Woodhouse. CT bolted eight 42" displays together, using a series of tubes and poles which enabled them to twist the display into place. "This allowed us to create some dynamic angles, while at the same time ensuring that the structure was safe."
The displays were fed off a laptop-controlled matrix from a number of different sources. The event was recorded for Channel 4 and MTV2 and thus CT were asked to provide a 2 x PPU system, incorporating a quantity of Betacam SP and Digi recorders. The service company also provided four Sony D30 cameras (to achieve wide angle, tight lectern and overhead balcony shots) while jib and handheld cameras, provided by Channel 4, mixed into the CT system.
Situated stage left and right were two 8 x 6 Barco iLite 8 LED screens, and while signals routed to the big screens were processed on a Grass Valley mixer, the graphics (generated from Reality's laptops), VT play-ins and camera TX were submixed and switched to the plasmas. "We were confident the plasma array would work in such a random format because we had already test-run it back at base," said Mark. "Everyone seemed very happy with the effect."
(Lee Baldock)
