The Royal Variety Show was staged at Liverpool Empire Theatre, produced by ITV Productions and presented by Philip Schofield and Kate Thornton. It featured performances from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Bon Jovi, James Blunt, Seal, Katherine Jenkins, Got Talent winner Paul Potts and numerous others.
Lighting designer Al Gurdon and producer Glen Middleham both specified Catalyst onto the project, so Reith supplied his Version 4 server to feed images to a front projection screen, a main upstage video wall and also to Barco MitTix panels.
The majority of the content was created by Reith, with special material for Bon Jovi's set produced by Projected Image Digital's Nev Bull. The brief for the Bon Jovi content was to provide a realistic 'wall of light' effect with up to 100 fixtures chasing in specific formations. Once programmed, the Catalyst system was triggered via a WholeHog lighting desk operated by Reith.
The BBC's high profile SPOTY event took place at Birmingham's NEC, featuring an eye-catching lighting design by Gurdip Mahal and Catalyst operation by Ian Reith, again run via a WholeHog lighting console.
Catalyst was spec'd for the show by Mahal, and Reith used three machines. The two main ones had just been upgraded to the new Mtron Solid State hard drives by Projected Image Digital - allowing up to double the number of video layers to be played back with maximum performance.
The media servers fed images to a large upstage video wall, to several sections of Barco MiTrix modules under the stage floor and to a number of X Chip LED fixtures inset into the '07' lettering on the back wall of the set and 'dance floor'.
PID's Nev Bull was once again involved in producing custom content services on site. He created a collection of low resolution footage to compliment the BBC's images and re-rendering and edited existing footage to match the unusual screen shape and size.
(Jim Evans)
