Pearce Hire and Hawk Audio Visual in the ring
- Details
BGL Group is a financial services company based in Peterborough and the biennial event which celebrates and rewards staff achievements, was also part of the company’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
Pearce Hire’s project manager John Huson provided some insight into the support and co-operation between Hawk and Pearce Hire. “Hawk Audio Visual has been a client of Pearce Hire for over 20 years and during that time we’ve actually partnered with them on four previous BGL Balls alongside many other events which usually averages 15 to 20 jobs every year. Hawk Audio Visual was the main technical producer for the BGL Ball - we supported them by providing lighting, audio and staging equipment and a dozen crew members on site.”
The brief was a simple, yet challenging one - to produce an event which was both visually stunning and sounded great, and all to be worthy of the desired circus theme.
As well as project managing for Pearce Hire, John was appointed as the BGL Ball lighting designer, a challenge which he relished. With the evening combining many elements of dining, awards presentation, circus cabaret performance and live music, his design had to be flexible and adaptable to each aspect of the evening.
“I wanted to create a high octane, glittering lighting design to complement the circus and gymnastic performers who were going to be on stage and entertaining guests around the room. We needed to create a real ‘wow’ factor for everyone attending this celebratory evening.”
Essentially LED technology was at the heart of the lighting design and to produce the look that John was seeking to create. “We drew on our significant stock of Robe Pointe and Robe 1200 LEDWash fixtures, alongside our recent investment in the new Vari-Lite VL2600 Profile fixtures to provide the key elements of the lighting design for the main stage area,” explains John.
“It was also an opportunity for us to use the Robe RoboSpot system for the powerful BMFL fixtures being used for the live circus performances. The overall lighting control was operated from Chamsys across the event.”
With over 200 Robe and Vari-Lite fixtures as the main work horses on the rig for staging and effects lighting throughout the evening, additional effects lighting was provided by Ayrton MagicBlades. The bar and VIP areas were a mix of Martin MAC 700 Profiles, SGM P-5 washlights and i-Pix BB4’s.
From an audio point of view the remit was to provide audio suitable for a traditional awards show whilst also ensuring suitable reinforcement for the after dinner band, and pre- and during dinner circus performances.
The audio was controlled throughout the event from Yamaha, networked by Dante, and in total 84 L-Acoustics loudspeakers and operated from 28 channels of RF.
The staging demands were also complex with over 200 metres of curved truss and 410 metres of standard truss being specified, with 79 rigging points installed by KRS, alongside a significant amount of Pearce Hire’s Prolyte Litedeck units, plus almost 2,000 metres of drape from the Pearce Hire inventory.
(Jim Evans)
