The busy schedule for the evening included a pre-dinner drinks reception with background music, a three course meal, 12 award presentations, a charity presentation, a silent auction and entertainment from comedian Jimmy Carr followed by a live salsa band.
The production presented a number of challenges for Event Concept's head of AV Jamie Corteen and his team. Corteen said: "The venue is long, quite narrow and very tall. Essentially it's a huge Cathedral-like space built from Portland stone. To effectively fill it with good quality sound the placement and angling of the speakers must be spot on."
The venue is a working public court so the amount of set-up time can be severely restricted. Corteen added: "Our new Yamaha M7 digital audio desk allows us to retrieve settings stored from previous events at the venue saving precious time on site. Microphone inputs, levels and delays are all pre-programmed in our studio so we can literally roll our kit in and be ready to go with minimal technical checks."
It was also the first outing for the company's new Q series d&b PA system. Corteen used 12x Q7 speakers, two QSubs and a series of E3s as front-fills. He said, "The team was really pleased with how the D&B PA system performed in the space: the sound was clear, crisp, loud and had plenty of body."
The video system comprised of a rear projected 12' x 9' screen built into a set. There was a range of media displayed including DVD, DVCAM, Powerpoint a laptop feed showing the live auction results and live camera feed.
(Jim Evans)
