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Hawthorn Helps Knight of Illumination Awards Celebrate Tenth Anniversary

UK – Celebrating the very best talent in the world of lighting and video design, the 10th Knight of Illumination Awards took place at the iconic Eventim Apollo, London on 17th September 2017. As one of the ceremony’s spotlight sponsors, creative technical event expert Hawthorn provided full technical production for the glamorous occasion. Over the last ten years, the evening has firmly established itself as a highlight in the lighting and video design calendar, providing a platform to recognise the hard work and boundless creativity demonstrated in the industry. With over 500 lighting and video professionals attending the award ceremony, the pressure was on for Hawthorn to deliver a spectacular production. Hawthorn’s lighting designer Chris Green took up the challenge of delivering an impressive design to a room filled with the most esteemed LDs in the industry.

With the awards marking their 10th anniversary this year, a glamorous gold theme added a large dose of luxury to the evening’s proceedings. With Claypaky as headline sponsor, Green used a range of their fixtures to produce a lighting design that fitted the look and feel of the iconic venue perfectly. “We used twenty K20 B-EYEs all running in Full mode which allowed for pixel mapping,” says Green. “We used 12 of these on an upstage curved truss which sat just above the screen and really framed the stage. During the ceremony, the fixtures were used purely for eye-candy as we could create some detailed award sting looks thanks to their pixel mapping ability. They were then used as a warm wash to boost light level during dinner. Another eight K20 B-Eyes were also used on the floor to light up our custom-made 12m red velour drapes, adding that all important sense of grandeur.”

Fourteen Scenius Profiles were also used on the rig to add detail to looks whilst also adding atmosphere to the room with another six used behind the stage to add depth. QWO 800s added break up on the drape and provided backlight for the stage whilst Sharpy Wash fixtures were used for the stage wash. To complete the design, Green used a whopping 60 PARs in bars of six placed upright along the drape line. Used at low levels, the warm golden glow complemented the evening’s theme and added detail and contrast against the red drape.

For video, Hawthorn ran a 12m x 3.75m custom super-wide projection screen using two of Barco’s new UDX 4K projectors. Video content for the evening was designed and delivered by ArKaos, another Knight of Illumination spotlight sponsor.

The in-house sound system provided the audio with Hawthorn bringing in a Digico SD9 digital mixing console and 6 channels of Sennheiser headset mics.

Tom Ring, senior project manager at Hawthorn, said: “It’s always an honour to be chosen to deliver the technical production or the Knight of Illumination Awards. Having your work on display in front of the great and the good of the industry definitely adds to the pressure but we love the challenge and we were lucky to have some fantastic Claypaky fixtures to work with. We always strive to make each year bigger and better and with this year’s ceremony marking ten years of the ceremony, we really wanted to deliver the wow factor.

Sarah Rushton-Read, creative director of The Fifth Estate Ltd, the company responsible for producing and organising the KOI awards event said: “We have a fantastic working relationship with Hawthorn. Tom Ring and his team always know exactly how to work our budget to make our ambitious vision for KOI a reality. With limited time to get in and set up I can honestly say the result exceeded our expectations! Chris Green’s design delivered the sparkling glamour and cool sophistication required for an event that celebrates the remarkable skill and creativity of the top entertainment lighting and video designers in the industry.”

As well as delivering the technical production for the evening, Hawthorn also sponsored this year’s category for projection design. Presented by Hawthorn’s CEO, Martin Hawthorn, the award went to Lysander Ashton of 59 Productions for his design on City of Glass.

www.hawthorn.biz

28th September 2017

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