The event, held in the Grand Ballroom of The Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, acknowledges the achievements of the Asia-Pacific hedge fund industry; bringing together both international and Asian managers and investors to celebrate the best performing Asia-Pacific hedge funds.
TAO were contracted three weeks prior to the awards by Matt Stowe of London based design agency NewSubstance to provide production management and consultancy for the event.
TAO's Managing Director Andy Cotton started by liaising with the hotel's supplier, Simon Lam of Hong Kong based company Base Create, and hotel events manager Samantha Chow. The set was designed as all white with a central 12' x 9' rear projection screen which was fed via signals from two camera positions and awards graphics through a Barco 12000 central projector, connected to a further Serco projector feeding the in-house front projection screen. Stage left and right set consisted of 3m x 3m NewSubstance designed graphics featuring the awards and sponsors logos, which included Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.
Although the Grand Ballroom of The Four Seasons was booked prior to the event leaving only a four hour get in and build time, TAO went for a lighting led appearance with a 32ft by 15ft high white gloss backdrop with stage and central runway running 21ft out into the audience. The whole stage and runway was skirted and carpeted in white to allow for maximum usage of the lighting fixtures.
TAO MD Andy Cotton said: "We were asked to create something a bit different but within a very limited build time; I thought that the winners walking down a catwalk may look effective, which would allow us to add a little rock & roll lighting and allow the winner to walk up to collect his award raised above his peers."
AV Productions of Hong Kong supplied trussing together with 18 Varilight 2500 spot fixtures and 12 High End 575 Studio Beam Fixtures, with the whole rig consisting of intelligent fixtures due to the lack of time to focus generic fittings. The final piece of the lighting jigsaw was to colour change the white stage underneath the presenters, achieved by edging the stage with 14 LED colour changing batons.
The hotel sound system was supplemented with bass end speakers and UPAs for delays to reach the rear of the 350 guests. The system was required to play pre-recorded stings as walk up music for each of the twelve awards. Wireless lectern microphones were used for the presenters and speeches with back up from hand held SM58 radio mics.
The final part of the production was to provide the client with clean laptops for PowerPoint displays, two Sony live DV cameras and switcher units all connected to screens.
(Jim Evans)
