Promoted by MCD, Ireland's National Music Awards have been held annually since 2001, and is held at the 7000-capacity RDS Simmonscourt pavilion in Dublin. The show was televised by RTÉ in a special programme directed by Niamh White.
CAVS have many years experience handling similar large-scale events for the Awards' production company, Diffusion Events, and have rigged many shows at the venue. For this event their crew included Brian Moran (head technician) and Malcolm MacDonald, on main stage, while in the media centres and VIP rooms were Neil Whelan, Austin Agnew, Jeff Doolin and Eoin Devitt.
"From a production point of view, the venue provides ease of access, with a good network of fly points spanning the entire ceiling and good loading facilities," says CAVS project manager, Rowan McDonagh. "Its large event handling experience lends itself to shows of this nature."
This year they specified Christie Roadster S+16K 16,000 ANSI lumen 3-chip DLP devices to rear project onto a 60ft x 21.5ft curve screen conceived by set designer Alan Farquharson.
Explained McDonagh, "We had previously done a gig in Ardmore Studios in Dublin using the same curved screen over 60ft x 30ft. Again we used the Roadster S+16K projectors - with great success; hence we decided to do the same with the Meteors set.
"In both instances the curved performance space was the central aspect of the show, so a rear projection rig, using edge blend, was the only way to achieve maximum aesthetic effect."
Three Roadster S+16K's were mounted on trussing sections using Christie fly frames, with further Christie DS+8K's mounted underneath using Christie stacking modules as back-ups.
