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Blitz Brings the Blue Planet to Life
Blitz, the UK's leading technical staging specialist, was commissioned by SMG World Class Ltd to bring The BBC's Blue Planet Live! to three arena venues in the UK. Blitz was tasked with providing a complete audio visual solution for the show working with the Production Manager, Alan Cox, and Producer, Howard Raynor, of SMG World Class.
The show consisted of stunning sequences from the BBC's award winning Blue Planet series, projected onto an 18 metre wide by ten metre high screen that had to be synchronised to the musical accompaniment from a 90 piece orchestra and choir, conducted by composer George Fenton. The Blue Planet Live! ran over the Christmas period, visiting the MEN in Manchester, Newcastle's Metro Radio Arena and the Nottingham Arena, and was a huge success, attracting an audience of over 14,000.
Blitz provided the high-end AV equipment needed to maximise the impact of the show as well as a full range of rigging and support services. The range of AV equipment used included Cadac mixers, various loudspeaker systems, and up to 110 microphones on stage at any one time. In addition, Blitz stored Blue Planet images on Doremi Hard Drives and mixed in camera images of the orchestra onto the screen. As the synchronisation between the images and the orchestra was so critical, Blitz ensured that there was a minimal frame delay in the processing of the video. Blitz ran the system SDI and used Fibre-optics to link the mixing desk to the DP 35HD twin projection system.
Paul Hutton, managing director of Blitz explains: "The Blue Planet project was exciting as we not only supplied equipment for the run of shows, but we were involved with advising on the most innovative utilisation of the equipment to maximise the impact of the shows. The project was challenging, as it ran in three venues over three days, so we had to rig and de-rig equipment swiftly, therefore it was critical that the whole team worked together well. The end result was amazing, with huge projected images combining with the orchestra and choir to create an intense audio visual experience."
Commenting on the project, Howard Raynor, of SMG World Class Ltd said: "SMG World Class wanted to test a new concept for Arenas; we needed a partner who understood how to integrate the sound and vision for the show and produce a great live orchestral sound in an Arena environment. Blitz demonstrated its expertise in this task - these are some of the best underwater photographs ever taken, by Tom Panagos, and one of the UK's greatest living composers was conducting. High quality was vital and Blitz delivered three outstanding performances for us."
photo: Tom Panagos, Bird Consultancy.
9th January 2007
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