With four London sites to service over a three day period, which included an outside broadcast location on HMS President, ITV's South Bank Studio 1 and Covent Garden's Avenue of the Stars, MHTV felt it needed a one stop shop to successfully coordinate the large format projection, lighting and power distribution, plus rigging and staging the entire event. Croydon-based project manager Loz Wilcox took responsibility for the projection needs, while John McEvoy from PRG Europe's Greenford branch looked after lighting for each of the locations.
As part of the celebrations, ITV unveiled its spectacular Avenue of the Stars in London's Covent Garden. A host of press and celebrity guests looked on as 100 star shaped engraved stones in the walkway were revealed outside the famous Actors Church, St Paul's. Using a combination of VL2000 and VL1000 spots to light the walkway plus six CityColors and numerous 1.2k and 2.5k HMI fresnels for general lighting of the church, lighting director Stuart Gain created "a glamourously dignified visual feast".
On the roof of the studio building were two Pani BP12 12kW HMI projectors carrying the ITV 50 logo, which were projected directly on top of one another onto the east tower of the building. Wilcox explains: "The projectors were positioned on the third floor roof of the GMTV studios, and the images projected onto the high rise part of the building."
On the HMS President, an outdoor stage was lit with an equal number of VL2000 spots and washes rigged on a PRG Europe-supplied truss, configured in a goalpost arrangement. From each of the ship's portholes a parcan blasted out over the water. Control was provided by a Wholehog console operated by Mark Ninnim.
The bulk of the TV special broadcast came from Studio 1, where Gain spec'd a rig that combined VL5s, more VL2000 washes and spots, 56 PixelLine Battens, ChromaPanels, ChromaPars and Pixel Pars - an LED-fest that created a clean and colourful set for the programme. Programmer in Studio 1 was Ian Reith who used a Virtuoso VX console.
(Jim Evans)
