CPL supplies LED screens for Hay Festival
- Details
This year Hay Festival celebrated its 35th year in style with over 500 ‘live’ events staged across 11 days which included an impressive line-up of in-person appearances from Hillary Clinton, Svetlana Alexievich, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Stephen Fry, Nicola Sturgeon, Minnie Driver, Monica Ali, Damian Lewis, Jimmy Page, Damon Galgut, Ben Okri and more, uniting readers and writers together in a series sustainable events designed to inspire, examine and entertain.
Each of the two CPL supplied arenas featured a central 4.5m-wide by 2.5m - wide LED screen at the back of the stage, flanked by two 2.5m by 1.5m portrait delay screens flown either side, all made up from Roe BO3 Black Onyx product and powered by Brompton SX40 processors with Brompton’s XD Boxes. HP Z-Books and Apple MacBook Pro’s fed Barco S3 systems which were supplied for independent mixing and switching across the multiple screen surfaces.
CPL first became involved as a technical supplier to Hay Festival in 2018. Project manager Mike Radford comments: “It was fantastic to be working on this thought-provoking and fun event from so many perspectives, apart from the great ambience and vibes and the significance of the interaction and events, it was brilliant to see the live audiences and feel that energy again.”
CPL was asked onboard as an LED supplier by Stuart Dowdell, one of the event’s production managers and video technicians.
The requirement was for crisp clear high-definition images, so The Roe 3.4mm screen was picked and the systems designed to ensure all in the rooms could clearly and comfortably see a range of PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, VT playbacks, live camera feeds, pre-show rolls plus sponsor loops and stings as well as information pertinent to the specific event or debate taking place onstage.
If presenters utilised PowerPoint or Keynote in their addresses, this content was displayed on the main screens, with live camera feeds going to the sides. If it was a talk or an interview with no video presentation, then all the screens showed live camera relays.
The versatile Barco S3s supplied seamless matrix switching to all screens with options of full screen and PIP’d content whilst the Brompton processors and XD Boxes supplied a fully redundant system across Fibre Optic Network.
A CPL crew went to site to fly the screens and set up the systems, ensuring they were hooked up to the provided playback and camera packages, and Stuart co-ordinated crew to run everything for the duration of the festival.
With a mix of presentations, discussions, debates, book launches and other events taking place during the days, at night these spaces were transformed for music and comedy performances with late-night gigs from Jarvis Cocker, Corinne Bailey Rae, Frank Turner and numerous others, or new comedy shows from Bill Bailey, Nina Conti, Simon Amstel and more.
