The 4.48m wide (Barco Olite) screen situated in the stunning neo-classical courtyard of Somerset House, showed live streaming from the catwalk shows and highlights from London Fashion Week events and interviews.
Chaos worked with Bacchus and other contractors to streamline the systems used to broadcast the catwalk shows from other locations on the main courtyard screen, "Last year we were faced with every catwalk show from all the other LFW locations bringing us the edited video of their show in a completely different format, sometimes we'd have bags full of USB's all holding different formats all needing to be uploaded and shown on the main screen straight away - that was a challenge!" said Alex Leinster, project director at Chaos.
This year the British Fashion Council (BFC) were keen to improve the speed at which the shows were available to Somerset House attendees, as well as on the internet, and so the system for a common format was prepared. This meant that Chaos could upload edited shows and news from all the other LFW locations, within an hour of each show ending, and subsequently the internet upload time was dramatically improved too.
The Vodafone fashion show was quite a spectacular involving special effects, camera systems and projection provided by Chaos.
"This is a project with a different tempo and of course you have to be sensitive to designer needs," said Chaos UK MD Gary White. "But the traditional lines between a corporate job such as this and where we often work - in Rock and Roll - are becoming more and more blurred. Rock and Roll is becoming more corporate in many ways because bands are investing their own money into their tours and of course they want to be sure that every detail is not only what they envisaged, but also money well spent; similarly, corporate clients who may have been relatively understated in their tastes years ago are now interested in something more adventurous and are often looking to rock and roll for inspiration"
"LFW is a bridge between the two worlds in many ways, it needs to work like the slickest of corporate events, and with the worlds eyes firmly focused on how fabulous things look it needs to project rock and roll glamour, as they say in fashion 'effortlessly'"
The de-rig for Chaos will be delayed due to a planned visit by the Queen to Kings College on Tues 28th February, "Everything else will be cleared apart from our set up and the courtyard screen, we haven't been told yet what the Queen would like to see playing on it so we might come up with our own special tribute...and a request for an invitation for tea!"
(Claire Beeson)
