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PSL Project Bigger and Better Image for BAFTA’s
As the 2007 Orange British Academy Film Awards moved across London, PSL Events was following closely behind. Once again, production design company West Design had asked PSL to play a central role in creating the right look for the Awards venue on the big night.
This year, the Awards was staged in the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, a cool elegant exterior in sharp contrast to the bright lights of the Leicester Square Odeon cinema. With British film-making enjoying a particularly energetic renaissance, there was a new determination to make the Awards event bigger, grander and glossier than in previous years.
"We wanted to elevate the British awards ceremony to the level of the Oscars in the USA," says Lucy Smail. "The brief was all about inspiring a real sense of occasion, and to make the best use of the magnificence of the Royal Opera House's classical façade to do this."
Last year's BAFTAs were memorable for the awful weather conditions. This year, the celebrities were protected against the elements by West Design's massive clear spanned roof, custom-built high across Bow Street and the red carpet, anchored to a massive truss structure, itself some 5.5 metres high.
The famous colonnaded façade of the Opera House was gloriously enhanced by richly coloured dynamic projections. "For the main façade of the Opera House, I wanted to use a very different quality of light; last year, we had brash in-yer-face LEDs, but I wanted to be much more subtle, in keeping with the classical façade." West Design contracted PSL Events to handle all projection for the event. "With guests arriving for the ceremony at the end of the afternoon, the light was too bright for us to use video," explains Pod Bluman of PSL.
Instead Lucy Smail asked for PIGI slide projection, "which has a more beautiful gentle light; although it's a very powerful projection, it is sympathetic to the architecture of the building." PSL supplied two PIGI 6k slide projectors with automated rotating double-scrollers to project onto the main pillared façade of the Royal Opera House. PSL projectionists Fergus Noble and Philip Pieridis squeezed themselves into the windows of the Bow Street Magistrates Court opposite, where the openings were barely large enough for two projectors.
All the projection content was produced by PSL's in-house design team to Lucy Smail's specification. Onto screens mounted behind the columns of the main House, Smail had printed famous quotations from classic movies. As the light faded, and the projection kicked in, the text could be seen scrolling, moving across the masks in an apparently multi-layered montage of graphics. The House has never looked so good.
28th February 2007
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