CPL helps Hay Festival shine
- Details
It was the first time the west-Midlands based visual and technical production specialist had worked on the event, for which they were approached directly by the event organisers and asked to be a video supplier after several recommendations. It was also the first time that the event had gone to LED for video display, having worked with projection festival-wide for several years.
There are eight major live stages - offering over 5000 seats - and CPL was the video supplier for the two largest areas, the 1716 capacity Tata Tent and the Oxfam Moot stage which accommodated 921 people. Both featured an eclectic line-up of events running every day from 8 in the morning to 9.30 each night.
The project was managed for CPL by George Oakey from the office / warehouse end, and on-site by Stuart Dowdell, a regular CPL freelancer and a seasoned Hay Festival video tech having worked on it for the last six years. This meant he was in an excellent position to know exactly what was needed, and was one of those recommending CPL’s products and services.
The Roe 3.4mm HD screen was specified and designed to enable everyone in the rooms to clearly and comfortably be able to see a range of PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, VT playbacks, live camera feeds, pre-show rolls plus sponsor loops and stings as well as information related to the specific event or debate taking place onstage.
Both stages had three screens, a central upstage surface flanked by two side LEDs. In the Tata Tent, the main screen measured 5m wide by 2.5m high, supported by two 2.5 x 1.5m wide side screens. The Oxfam stage featured a 3.5m wide central screen with two slightly smaller satellite screens.
The various video feeds (stage laptops, control laptops, visualizer feeds, OB cameras, etc.) were routed via one of CPL’s Blackmagic SDI matrixes.
The OB trucks - the BBC broadcasts many elements of the festival across multiple channels - could then create their own mix. Presentations on both Tata and Oxfam stages - as hubs of the festival action - were recorded by the BBC, some for immediate and some for later broadcast. The matrix fed a Roland switcher operated by an assistant stage manager in each case, who could control any video feed and route it to any screen.
Two CPL Brompton M2 Processors were used per venue, one handling the main screen and one for the two side screens, and these were also fed programme and aux feeds from the Roland via the matrix.
(Jim Evans)
