A stellar line up included a rare stand-up appearance by maverick alt comedian Ben Elton, who co-hosted the evening with pub landlord Al Murray, plus a host of other high profile acts including Doc Brown, Hal Cruttenden, Richard Herring, Robin Ince, Milton Jones, Francesca Martinez, Sally Phillips and Paul Tomkinson.
Entec was approached by event organiser Susan Dorrington of Scope, who was looking for a full technical solution for the show. Entec's Noreen O'Riordan project managed, and asked Phil White on-board to design the lighting. Entec's own Ryan Brown and Ed Hammond took care of video and sound respectively.
There was already a basic lighting plot in place when White became involved in the project, so he used this as a starting point and then developed a simple but unique look for the stage. "The idea was to make it a bit different and more interesting than an average stand-up setting," he explains.
Entec supplied four white 24ft deep by 5ft wide silks which were utilised to make staggered side wings, wider apart at the front and narrower at the back, to give the stage more depth and a definite sense of perspective.
These legs were back-lit with Vari*Lite VL2000 Washes on the floor and front lit with V*L2500 Spots - one per silk - rigged on house bars immediately downstage of the silks. It was another essential requirement that the stage was kept clean and clear and that no lights were obviously visible from the front.
All the stage lighting was controlled by White using a grandMA full size console, and he worked closely with Entec's crew.
Entec's Ed Hammond took care of all things sonic. They installed a standard Hammersmith Apollo system for spoken word shows, which comprised main left and right hangs of nine d&b Q1s a side, with two Q-SUBS at the top of the array to get low-end punch to the back of the room and up onto the balcony in particular.
Ground stacked were three Q-SUBS per side, and the infills were four d&b E3s and four Q7s. All the speakers were driven by d&b D12 amplifiers. The time alignment and EQ was determined in advance using d&b's ArrayCalc.
Hammond engineered the show utilising a Yamaha LS9 16-channel console.
The mics were four Shure SM58 hand-helds, and the whole sound design was based on getting the vocal intelligibility spot-on all around the venue, a task relatively straightforward using the Q Series in that room.
(Jim Evans)
