Hosted by Matt Lucas and produced by Attitude, the award-winning gay magazine in association with Virgin Holidays, the glamour and the glitz was in full flow.
Eclipse's production manager Andrea Witt and project manager Nikhil Shah worked closely with Attitude's show producer Annie Bracken and Seasoned Events to ensure that everything ran like clockwork on the night and that the setting and environment helped make it a memorable night for guests.
The gala dinner and awards ceremony saw a star-studded line up of celebrities rock up, to see the likes of Daniel Radcliffe, Paul O'Grady and Cher collect their awards, together with a special guest appearance by chart-topping singer, Ellie Goulding.
Says Andrea Witt, "We were delighted to win the pitch and be able to add copious amounts of production magic to the night. To do this in such a short timeframe needed some serious pre-planning, attention to detail and great teamwork and we were really pleased to deliver a fantastic event."
The many challenges of the day included an exceptionally tight timeframe. Three trucks of equipment - staging, sound, lighting, video, all the furniture etc. - had to be loaded into the RCJ between 4 and 5 a.m. on the day.
Between 5 and 8 a.m. the Eclipse crew of 22 - including technical, riggers, carpenters and locals - built and installed what they could. No cables could be run and no trusses or stands rigged above a certain height, leaving a large amount of kit having to be stored discreetly.
Work then had to cease completely, while the law courts operated as normal for the day.
The crew returned at 5 p.m. and had 90 minutes working furiously to complete the rigging, wiring, testing, etc. and have the spaces - Main Hall, Reception area and Red Carpet - ready and looking fabulous in time for a 7 p.m. rehearsal and sound check, followed immediately by doors.
It was a slick operation with everything having to happen in sequence to maximize the time for all departments ... as it pieced together like a giant jig-saw puzzle.
As the RCJ is also a Grade 1 listed building, extra care was taken to ensure that nothing was touching any of the walls and the floors were fully protected with plinths underneath the lighting and PA stands, etc.
The exterior of the building was up-lit in red (for Virgin) using Core battery operated LED uplighters. These also blended tastefully with the RCJ's own architectural lighting scheme, picking out the detail of the splendid Victorian era Gothic Revival style building The majestic internal entranceway arches were also lit by Eclipse using the same fixtures.
While guests were eating dinner end enjoying the Awards razzamatazz the Eclipse team worked frantically to transform the reception into a buzzing aftershow space, complete with full DJ set up and sparkly booth surround, a 20 x 20 ft dancefloor, a host of bubble sofas and cool soft white furnishings and extra lighting effects.
An 8m wide by 3 deep stage was built for the presentation, complete with an RGB Chameleon starcloth backdrop and two 3m tall vertical 'glitter disks' positioned just downstage of this. These provided a funky set and plenty of camera candy for the IMAG relay of the Awards.
There is no flying in the venue, so lighting and audio speaker positions were all facilitated using stands.
Leading lighting designer Andy Emmerson used 18 moving lights - Martin MAC 700 Profiles and Washes and Clay Paky Alpha Spot 800 QWOs to illuminate the stage and table areas. ETC Source Fours with breakup gobos provided a further subtle lighting layer for the tables, and 1K fresnels and more Source Four profiles created the basic stage washes.
A d&b sound system was installed consisting of E9 s
