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PRG Europe Lights Up ITV's Golden Celebrations
With four sites to service over a three-day period, which included an outside broadcast location on the ship HMS President, ITV's South Bank Studio 1 and Covent Garden's Avenue of the Stars, MHTV felt it needed a one stop shop to successfully coordinate the large format projection, lighting and power distribution, plus rigging and staging the entire event.
Croydon-based project manager Loz Wilcox took responsibility for the projection needs, while John McEvoy from PRG Europe's Greenford branch looked after lighting for each of the locations.
HMS President was the live outside broadcast location, moored on the Embankment at Blackfriars Bridge; it is already a party and conference venue and set up for this kind of event. However, load in and out is totally governed by high tide times, as John explains: "At low tide the ramp onto the ship is simply too steep to carry equipment on and off. Also, because we could only get our trucks to within 250m of the ship, load in took that little bit longer."
As part of its birthday celebrations ITV also unveiled its spectacular Avenue of the Stars in London's Covent Garden. The Hollywood style Walk of Fame has been created as a tribute to Commonwealth stage and screen stars of yesterday and today.
A host of press and celebrity guests looked on as 100 star shaped engraved stones in the walkway were revealed outside the famous Actors Church, St Paul's. The recording of this event took place on the Friday evening, so that it could be interspersed with the live broadcast from HMS President and the studio on Sunday night.
Using a combination of VL2000 and VL1000 spots to light the walkway plus six CityColors and numerous 1.2k and 2.5k HMI Fresnels for general lighting of the church, lighting director Stuart Gain created a glamorously dignified visual feast.
On the roof of the studio building were two Pani BP12 12kW HMI projectors carrying the ITV 50 logo, which were projected directly on top of one another onto the east tower of the building. Loz explains: "The projectors were positioned on the third floor roof of the GMTV studios, and the images projected onto the high rise part of the building. After a site visit back in August, we were able to determine the actual positions and projectionist Peter Wilms could work out keystoning long before the artwork went to the lab. As with any live event, there are no second chances, so we made sure it was absolutely right first time."
Meanwhile, on the HMS President, an outdoor stage was lit with an equal number of VL2000 spots and washes rigged on a PRG Europe-supplied truss, configured in a goalpost arrangement. From each of the ship's portholes a parcan blasted out over the water. Control was provided by a Wholehog console operated by Mark Ninnim.
The bulk of the TV special broadcast came from Studio 1, where Stuart spec'd a rig that combined VL5s, more VL2000 washes and spots, 56 PixelLine Battens, ChromaPanels, ChromaPars and Pixel Pars - an LED-fest that created a clean and colourful set for the programme. Programmer in Studio 1 was Ian Reith who used a Virtuoso VX console.
11th November 2005
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