CPL have been the event's technical supplier for the last five years, and there's always an exciting and ambitious brief to be fulfilled from production company Bright. This year their production designer and technical manager was Nick Diacre who liaised closely with CPL's PM Mike Radford.
Luminescence was the theme of this year's event, putting a big emphasis on lighting and visual presentation and treatment of the whole environment.
CPL flew a 10m diameter circular truss in the middle of the main room on six ProLyft 650Kg motors -- picked for their lighter weight - rigged on six structural arms making up the inner tent frame. This provided a central point for lighting positions.
Also rigged on this circle was a Panasonic 21K projector beaming on to a custom curved screen from J&C Joel, installed at one end of the space, video mapped using a combination of Mad Mapper and Resolume running on a pair of MacBook Pros.
A central stage was built beneath the circular truss and used for a series of awards presented earlier in the evening followed by a hi-energy performance by LED percussion troupe Spark!, after which it became the dancefloor hub as the party really got started.
Another stage towards the back of the space hosted a DJ and band for the whole evening.
The lighting design, created by Liam Griffiths, included eight ADJ UV LED COB Canons, flown from the main circle and a further six flown from 1.5m trusses dead-hung below each of the six outer tent arms. These arms were also rigged with a Clay Paky Mythos moving light, a Sharpy beam light and, two Martin PAR Zooms per length.
Floor mounted at the base of each of these truss sections was a Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot, firing light up onto the white tent roof creating more textures and effects, which had great impact.
Four Martin Jem compact hazers assisted with the atmospherics.
Positioned on the stage itself were six Clay Paky a.LEDA K10 LED wash fixtures fitted with B-Eye lenses and another four Mythos as well as some of the new GLP Impression X4 Bar 10 and Bar 20 tilting LED battens, mounted vertically, made available via A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd.
ARRI 650 Watt fresnels flown on the circle and the two tent arms nearest the stage provided general wash lighting for both stages.
All lights were programmed and operated by James Washer using a Chamsys MQ100 console.
The new d&b audio kit, used for the main PA, came to site directly after it had been delivered to CPL's warehouse in the West Midlands. Five Y8 speakers and one Y-SUB were ground-stacked each side of the stage creating the main left and right array, whilst four V-SUBS under the stage itself provided a substantial sub-array. The brief was to provide a clean high-clarity sound throughout the space, a task which the Y-Series excelled at.
The system was driven by d&b D12 amps, with one cab per channel, and mixed through a Yamaha QL1 console. CPL's audio crew used the R70 CAN interface to utilise the d&b Array Calculator and Array Processing software controlling each individual amp channel and providing improved control over the system.
"The aesthetics of the structure were amazing," commented Mike on the stylish tri-span which was supplied by Silver Stage, "as well as presenting many challenges which included the short get-in time, outdoors, during some extremely hostile weather! However this galvanised everyone involved from all companies and we produced a great looking party for the 700 guests."
Light Initiative also created two major sculptural LED lighting install
