For only the second time in history the Ghoema Afrikaans Music Awards were held at Carnival Arena and sponsored by Kyknet together with Rapport. Producer and Director of the event was Barry Pretorius from the Ghoema Music Trust and Tv Director was Andre Calitz from Blixem Productions.

Due to the fact that the 2012 Ghoema’s was such a huge success and that everyone just wanted this year to be bigger and better Barry took out all the stops and brought in only the best of everyone in their area of expertise. With Danny Smoke and Machiel Roets as Music Directors, Murray Lubbe on Sound, Johan Ferreira and Henre Bornman on Lighting, Choreography by Willie Venter, AV Designer was Wayne Teich, Watchout by Malcolm Finlay from Penmac and all LED Screens and Lighting equipment supplied by EPH Productions, it was sure to be an absolute star production on every level. The In-house PA system and Lighting was used as additional.

Heading up the EPH Productions Team was Leon Pheiffer who also did the initial stage designs and concept drawings that had to be approved by Kyknet. After approval it was up to Johan Ferreira our Lighting designer to take those drawings and convert them into actual scaled CAD drawings for the venue.

EPH Productions concept designs was made up of over 260 LED 12mm Screen panels used on the set. Most of them at curved angles across the stage of 18m wide. We had a solid 6m wide screen on the right hand side of the stage for all the nominees and video clips, plus a 2.4m x 3.6m backdrop for the lectern as a backdrop. All the risers on stage was curtained with LED panels and then we had 5 x 14m LED panels in rows as a graphic wall of the stage. In the roof above the stage were a half-moon pros arch and a long 22m s-curve across the stage. The complete LED set-up was managed by Andries van Heerden from EPH Productions and the set was finished off with a Star Curtain from AVL Productions.

The creative layout of the decor and information LED screens required a complex video server solution to effectively map the content into the required spaces. In addition, multiple video and audio files needed to be played back in sync and on cue at the precise moment in the production. Dataton WATCHOUT was the natural choice for this project and delivered the visual and audio content seamlessly throughout the two hour event.

In addition to the regular awards media, Murray Lubbe needed the flexibility of having 16 high quality audio playback tracks available as support to the live band events, also part of the evening’s program. The challenge was to have these multiple tracks played back in frame accurate sync to the visual content, when the show would naturally be interrupted for presenter interaction. For this requirement, PENMAC provided the latest audio server solution from Merging Technologies called OVATION. This application can provide 256 high quality audio streams – closely coupled to the WATCHOUT video server resulting in an integrated, multi-channel video and audio solution.

The complete lighting plan was drawn up by Johan Ferreira and all the lighting was made up with EPH Productions and the venue stock. Additional 8 Robe 600 was brought in from MGG and 7 Fresnel’s from Sound Headquarters. Technical manager for the Project was Danie van Rensburg from EPH Productions.

The production was a huge success and plans are already on the way to make next year even bigger and better than ever. For this reason EPH Productions will be taking ownership of their new 7mm and 5mm SMD LED screens this year June.