DBN was working for creative communications agency WRG and the event was the National Field Sales conference for a leading international pharmaceutical company.
The lighting rig was designed and the event project managed for DBN by Andy Kennett. The main challenge was to devise a rigging system to suspend a 2.5m dot pitch grid consisting of over 200 Pulsar ChromaSpheres above the audience in addition to a large number of moving and generic lights, which brought the total roof loading to 15 tonnes.
The loading constraints were 350Kgs per point, and the timescale for the get in and technical build was very short.
Working alongside the venue's structural engineer and WRG technical production manager Stuart Greaves, Kennett designed a truss system that was distributed over 90 points to achieve the technical requirements and comply with the structural constraints.
The client's new branding was based on dots, hence the impressive matrix of ChromaSpheres, which made a serious visual impact and provided a theme to the whole event. The lighting brief was to create an atmosphere and a pleasant, visually interesting environment, complete with theatricality that was also comfortable for guests to enjoy dinner and conversation as well as lighting the stage for the show.
In the centre of the room was a circular stage, with two catwalks to facilitate the evening's entertainment, which included a Riverdance style Celtic dancing show.
The sea of colour changing dots were pixel mapped through DBN's Hippotizer media server and fed with a variety of content. The LED table centres were also mapped through the Hippotizer so effects could mirror the main dot matrix.
For moving lights, 20 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 575 HPE and 20 Alpha Wash 575 TH were specified. There were also 16 CP Alpha Beam 300 fixtures. In addition to these, there were about 60 generics - a mix of Source Four profiles, ARRI 2Ks and ADB fresnels, all hung in the air.
All lighting in the room was controlled via a Jands Vista T2 console, programmed and run by Kennett, which also triggered the Hippotizer.
The ends of the catwalks were each flanked by a 2m PufferSphere complete with 360 degree projection system which moved in and out to different positions during the evening on points rigged by DBN.
(Jim Evans)
