International conglomerate Bidvest’s Annual Awards Gala Dinner in Johannesburg is one of SA’s biggest and highest profile corporate events of the year. We have the behind-the-scenes lowdown for this year’s event.
The three-night Bidvest awards event features a specially created extravaganza stage show and accommodates 1 100 guests per session, including Bidvest’s top executives and managers who travel from all corners of the brand’s impressive global trading empire.
Pressure on the production team led by executive producers Debbie Rakusin and co-producer David Bloch is intense, and the expectations always high to produce something innovative, unique and completely different to the previous year.
They come up with a series of initial concepts which are presented to Bidvest CEO Brian Joffe, and developed from there into a storyboard for the show. Joffe always has some ideas of his own, explains Rakusin, and he also gives her and Bloch the space to evolve the elements they think will work best to have most impact and entertainment value.
Variety
This year’s theme was “That’s Entertainment’.
Rakusin and Bloch sourced a cast of around 50, including dancers, five principal singers and a series of other performers – from Italian impressionists to members of the Chinese Imperial Circus.
They commissioned musical director Bryan Schimmel who also amassed the live band.
The budget was reasonable but not bottomless and the logistics of creating a world-class show with a true international flavour in the current economic climate and bringing it in bang on target are still: “A major challenge,’ affirms Rakusin, adding: “It’s a massive collaboration which results in some incredible teamwork.
‘With the results as rewarding as the whole thing is nerve-wracking at times!
Design
For the past few years Tim Dunn from Gearhouse South Africa has designed the event’s lighting, visuals and set the technical parameters, working closely with Pieter Joubert from sister company and set / scenic specialists, SDS.
Bidvest is also the largest corporate show for which Gearhouse currently supplies full technical production.
The company’s ability to deliver all the required technical disciplines enables a highly cost-effective solution and helps make planning and communications a smooth, efficient process as it all slots together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
The first meetings for the upcoming Bidvest show start about nine months in advance.
Once on site in the week immediately ahead of the show, the schedule is absolutely gruelling for all departments.
Resembling a West End blockbuster meets stadium rock show in attitude, scale and achievement; it’s no mean feat to transform a large stark room into a cosy, highly visual live entertainment experience that wows the crowds in a molten mix of drama, colour and excitement.
Dunn is renowned for always “pushing the envelope’ on his shows in terms of aesthetics, imagination and technical ambition.
He utilises the available equipment to produce the very best end results in a blend of experience, original ideas and he has the balls to take some risks! When Brian Joffe is involved, absolutely anything less than the best is not on the agenda.
Says Dunn: “The show stretches everyone to the limits to produce in a very short time-frame. I enjoy working at this pace, it keeps your mind totally alive, energises people and the end results are a great tribute to the dedication and commitment of all involved.’
Gearhouse’s project manager this year was Lee Reynolds, who co-ordinated the massive technical operation which included the supply of rigging, lighting, sound video and AV plus set and staging.
Dunn’s visual concepts year-to-year are radically different. Last year’s classic theatricality was replaced with a minimalist, high tech, video-based set with a dynamically cool urban look and feel.
The stage was clean and stylish.
Dunn also made the bold move of flipping it around 90 degrees from the 2011 event to run horizontally along the room, widening and shortening the entire space. This entailed meticulous pre-planning to get everything to fit and ensure that all parties and departments were happy.
A 29-metre wide video proscenium arch defined the performance space, and the addition of four large sets of movable steps mirrored one side and clad with LED panels the other, was a bold, practical visual effect adding depth and versatility.
This stripped back environment could be radically transformed with vibrant, highly detailed video content.
Twenty-four upstage and side stage scenic columns (all angled at 15 degrees) emulated multiple textures from corrugated metal to velvety stage drapes depending on how they were lit. These were rigged from trussing above and clad with over a kilometre of canvas.
The size of the pillars meant that 12 pantechs were needed to transport set to site, which was built by an SDS crew of five, project managed by Willie Louw.
Video
The main video elements were the spectacular pros arch framing the stage, made up from Lighthouse R16 panels; a large block of R16 upstage centre, six panels wide by 10 high; four jagged pieces of Christie DuoLED, 18mm pitch for the inner two and 12 for the outer flown from the roof; and the four sets of steps faced one side with DuoLED 18.
Left and right IMAG projection screens were offset to contrast with the sides of the pros arch which were also slightly jauntily angled – and were each fed by a pair of overlaid Christie 16K projectors.
The video control was specified by Chris Grandin, with the bespoke show content created by Marcel Wijnberger and Troy Wells from Gearhouse Media. They had plenty of input from Dunn who had precise ideas about the digital scenery he needed for different elements of the action-packed show.
The video content – together with 10 pre-recorded channels of multi-track audio plus a click track – were stored on an AV Stumpfl Wings media server.
Grandin looked at the easiest way of making all the video surfaces work flexibly both together and individually, using a Christie Vista Spyder processing system for screen management. He created a mask mapping the exact pixel spaces with which they were working onstage, and these could also be used to separate the R16 and DuoLED elements as required and to apply different looks and treatments as required.
Much of the content finally evolved as the show came close to completion during the concentrated five-day (and night) programming, technical and rehearsal period, for which Gearhouse Media provided full on-site editing facilities.
Using video in this way enabled instant flips of the scenery and visual background information to suit numerous scenarios – steamy, township musical mixology to industrial raw, utopian hippy dream worlds to retro jazz and synchronised cabaret spectacular.
It also filled the stage with basic colour and atmosphere for the additional line up of circus acts and mime artists. Even with a lone performer on the stage, the video setting could close down for intimacy and concentration – a powerful tool of visual psychology.
Lighting
Tim Dunn has been designing lighting and visuals for years – way before “convergence’ ever became a buzz word. When looking at a show environment the two mediums have a completely natural synergy.
The lighting rig featured many LED sources, to which he applied a few elements of magic so they would all work together in producing a uniform colour output.
Nine over-stage trusses – some angled to make it more interesting – provided lighting positions, and another 10 trusses formed the backbone structural supports for a scenic forestage canopy plus additional lighting positions.
The canopy trusses had to be angled and deaded precisely as they also stretched taut the canopy material attached to them, and it was also a bit of a brain teaser to calculate the cut patterns for the fabric.
The moving lights included Robe REDWash 3Ÿ192s and LEDWash 600s, Vari*Lite 3500 Spots and Martin MAC 101s. i-Pix BB4 LED wash / blinders were used to up-light the scenic columns back and side stage. Additional V*L3500 Spots and two Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500s on the floor up-lit the canopy.
Out in the auditorium eight striking scenic chandeliers – integral to the overall design – were hung in the roof and internally lit with 64 i-Pix Satellites.
Dunn programmed and controlled all the lighting – 13 DMX universes in total – on a grandMA full size console with another running in full tracking back up.
Gearhouse’s lighting crew chief Herman Wessels drew on his experience of Bidvest 2011 and picked 10 of their top lighting crew for the project, who worked with 20 stage hands from All Access.
Rigging – around 220 points in total hanging lighting, set, video and PA most requiring a myriad of bridling to get in precisely the right places – was installed by maestro Kendall Dixon working with a team of six – three climbers and three ground-based.
The pros arch was one of the most challenging elements; it weighed 3.5 tonnes and was lifted into place by 24 x 1-tonne Lodestars. It was split into two halves with a gap in the middle for the PA centre clusters and both the top and the sides were angled.
Apart from the short timescale of getting everything into place, the other issue for rigging was gaining every available centimetre of headroom … and Dixon ensured that not a millimetre was wasted.
Audio
This year Gearhouse asked Richard Smith to join their team as sound designer. He’s worked on Bidvest shows before but not for some time and collaborated closely with Andreas Furtner to specify the system.
A major task was ensuring all in the room enjoyed the same quality of sonic experience and also to satisfy Brian Joffe’s stipulation for cinematic quality, and that the large expanse of a room exuded the cosiness of a supper club lounge.
His starting point was Dunn’s set design which defined the space and where speaker arrays could be placed.
Due to the LED pros arch and sight lines, what would normally be a centre cluster was split into two smaller arrays and he added more front fills.
Although it was a relatively short run of around 40 metres to the back of the room, he decided to add delays half way down to help close the space down and boost the intimacy.
He specified L-Acoustics Kara for the main system – nine elements per side with two SB18 subs per array. He’s a big fan of the brand not just because his company (Sound Harmonics is SA distributor for the premium brand) but because in this case Kara’s smooth horizontal coverage was ideal for the shape of the auditorium and the main arrays 40 metres apart.
The two centre cluster hangs were three Karas each and four SB18 subs under the stage completed the bottom end set up.
The delays comprised two L-Acoustics dV-DOSC speakers a side and there was also another dV-DOSC each side of the orchestra pit for front fill. The whole system was driven by the proprietary LA8 amps, and L-Acoustics’ Network Manager software helped enormously in optimising the system and to get to sound bigger and fuller than its physical size.
Yamaha PM5D consoles were used at FOH and for monitors mixed by Kholofelo Cyril Sewela (popularly known as “Rasta’). Smith has used a PM5D for lots of theatre and festival work where it has proved a reliable and flexible choice.
The monitor system was made up of eight L-Acoustics ARCS II boxes in four arrays of two, the front ones on an 18-inch sub just behind the pros arch and the back two flown.
The show’s five singers were all on a Sennheiser IEM system.
The radio mics were Shure’s UR series, a mix of DPA headsets and Shure Beta 58 hand-helds and the band were micd with standard Shure Betas.
The audio playback tracks from the Wings system were broken down into 10 channels of different instrumentation – strings, percussion for Smith to add big band components to the mix on top of the 13-piece live band, who used an Aviom personal monitoring system.
Additional playback for some of the acts, awards stings, and so on, was fed via a QLab system.
With Bidvest 2012 another great success for Rakusin and Bloch and simultaneously embracing so many new ground-breaking technical goals, next year’s event is already hotly anticipated as an opportunity for more cutting-edge ideas.
By Louise Stickland
Pro-Systems magazine – 4th Quarter 2012
