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Corporate Success for PRG Europe
PRG Europe has been working on several corporate events recently, including a press launch for Persil Be My Coach, which aimed to encourage parents to get involved in sports with their children, and an event for Virgin Cosmetics in September.
At the end of August, the Z Room at the old Truman Brewery was designed to look like a garden while assembled journalists and camera crews took photographs of England cricket captain Michael Vaughan with groups of children. Then a larger event on the same afternoon, including performances by Mr Woo – widely acknowledged as the world's greatest football entertainer – and the Gandini Jugglin’ Project launched the Be My Coach programme for children and families. Produced by event management company So Just Add Water, PRG Europe supplied leaf gobos to add to the back garden effect. Craig Bennett, project manager for PRG Europe, explains: “To realise Jacqui Leigh's design we used We used seven trusses in the room, mounting a Martin Mac 500 with custom gobos on each – showing the logos of Persil, Be My Coach and a ‘splat’. Then on each truss we rigged four ETC Source Four Profiles with break up gobos and eight James Thomas PAR cans.”
All the lighting was controlled by a Pearl 2000 desk, with the custom gobos produced in house at PRG Europe’s west London offices.
Business communications agency the Dobson White Partnership (DWP) was contracted by Virgin Cosmetics to conceptualise, project manage and implement their annual conference, The Big One, to take place in Birmingham’s NEC Arena at the beginning of September.
“This was essentially a recognition and motivational extravaganza for the Virgin Vie sales force of some 5,000 workers,” explains DWP director Gary White. “The brief was to give Virgin Vie a real ‘Show’, rather than a conference, making it appeal to the overwhelmingly female audience by making it incredibly exciting but not detracting from the event’s message.”
Working alongside his production manager, David Gorton, Gary sourced and implemented an amazing set as a backdrop for this event. “Total Solutions Group manufactured a fantastic stage set for Take That, which had just come back after their UK tour, so we contacted them and arranged to use it for this event, along with all of the special effects. We also had them make up the audience access treads and side-stage car ramps. A real bonus was being able to contract the services of the various suppliers who had taken part in the tour. For instance, we hadn’t previously worked with PRG Europe or Summit Steel, but were keen to use them as they had familiarity with the set; of vital importance to us as load-in and out times were quite restricted for an event of this type. The event went off pretty much without a hitch, although we did suffer four venue-wide power blips towards the end of the show which took up to ten minutes to recover from, as the discharge lamps needed to restrike, not just for the lanterns but the projectors too. Having said that, the team worked brilliantly to overcome these challenges, and I’m not even sure anyone thought it wasn’t planned! When the client came up to us in the control position after the show he told us how fantastic it all looked, and that we had exceeded his expectations.”
Lighting designer Nick Jones takes up the story: “Luckily for us the followspots were on a separate supply, so during the outages we still managed to cover the action. We reckon the audience didn’t notice the lights going out as they were too absorbed by the chance to win one of the cars that were being driven on and off stage!”
“The lighting was mainly Vari*Lite luminaires with a bunch of PixelLine battens and conventionals,” says PRG Europe project manager Peter Marshall. “We used a Wholehog III to control the 50 moving lights plus over 30 LED fixtures. Luckily this large contingent of LED fixtures and conventionals meant they could be pretty much instantaneously powered back up, which explains why the power cuts went unnoticed. It being a corporate show with a rock theme there were no second chances, so despite the outages the show went on without interruption. We also supplied the four followspots - two Super Troupers on the seating tribune - and two truss spots. Nick Jones and programmer Pryderi Baskerville did a great job of making the lighting work wonders for the show.”
The show included several dance numbers as arranged by dance company Creative Crew complete with various props and costume changes. Adding to the visual feast were special effects courtesy of Le Maitre, including a low fog effect, “dragon head” balls of fire, and a 30-foot wide wall of flame that erupted from the downstage edge. The grand finale saw Creative’s dancers doing their routine with umbrellas while being drenched by Water Sculptures’ on-stage rain effect!
White concludes: “Everything went incredibly smoothly which is testament to the great work put in by the DWP team and all our suppliers. Our client was delighted - which means we were too!”
12th October 2006
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