Shining bright

Sound, light, and AV play an enormous role in creating events that stand out. StandOut highlights some great event examples, which have sound, light, and AV at their core

M ore than 11 million people in the UK watched the Grand Final of the 67th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – and witnessed Sweden’s Loreen win the biggest singing competition in the world. ACC Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena hosted the live event, which was a real smorgasbord of technical production and infrastructure.

The show featured more than 600 rigging points, 150 microphones, 1,200 individual streams of audio, and eight miles of cabling for lighting, sound, video, and SFX. An additional one kilometre of steel truss work was added to the arena to accommodate more than 2,000 specialist lighting fixtures, 23,700 individual light sources, and 2,500 automated state-of-the-art colourchanging robotic lights. Plus, the lighting team used nine consoles to run 28,000 lighting cues.

As the statistics demonstrate, the ESC is one of the largest events that the BBC has ever produced and featured the skills of many talented event professionals – Gary Beestone, Zoe Snow, Tim Routledge, Malcolm Birkett, Tony Wheeler, Luke Mills, and Chris Saunders – to deliver a must-see visual and television spectacle. The event was also the perfect example of high production values, and how light, sound, and AV – from companies such as Neg Earth, LED Creative, and NorthHouse Creative – can be used to wow audiences.

Immersive

Squidsoup creates immersive experiences using light, space, sound, scale, movement, and technology, and this July, its latest travelling artwork – Beyond Submergence – will open to audiences at Bristol’s

Propyard. The 20,000 square feet exhibition hopes to generate an emotional response in audiences with sound and light playing a key role in the experience’s finale. It’s a different example of how organisations are using light, sound, and AV to entertain.

For example, to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III, LCI Productions – in partnership with Barnet Council – illuminated Golders Hill Park. The event featured lasers and lights that illuminated the park with patriotic colours and patterns.

LCI Productions programmed Tarm 22 lasers which shot beams of light across the sky, creating a display that could be seen for miles. The event also lit up the surrounding trees in red, white, and blue, creating a patriotic atmosphere. A bandstand and marquee were also mapped with two high-powered Christie Boxer 4K30 laser projectors, which projected patriotic colours and the Union Jack flag.

Seamless Rotation

But light, sound, and AV can also be used to deliver important messaging and engage audiences too.

George P Johnson (GPJ), the experience marketing agency, appointed Creative Technology to supply services to Cisco Live 2023, Cisco’s premium partner and user experience event.

GPJ London oversaw the design, build, and implementation of Cisco Live at RAI Amsterdam. CT not only fully supported and equipped 34 self-operated breakout rooms – complete with interactive touch panels and a mix of single and blended laser projection displays – but it also supplied the main keynote area with a 62m x 4m 360-screen with seamless rotation, giving the audience an uninterrupted view of event content.

Imaginative Idea

Similarly, Agency DCE Loving Brands recently chose Europalco, an AV equipment provider, to deliver a complex management meeting and event in Lisbon for Millennium BCP, Portugal’s largest private banking corporation. The event, which brought together 1,600 guests, required the skills of 40 experienced technicians. They had just two days to build a set upon which Barbara Tinoco, the Golden Globe-winning singer/songwriter from Portugal, would perform.

Europalco’s engineers had to look for a solution that allowed DCE Loving Brands to keep the dynamic of the event and the desired time for Tinoco’s performance. As there was no space in the room to assemble the band at the expected time, the engineers created a suspended stage over the main meeting stage.

Europalco projected 45,000,000 pixels into an extra-wide curved screen that measured 525 square metres and used 12 Christie Boxer 4K30 projectors; whilst two Christie Spyder X80s video processors ran the contents and managed the displays.

Pedro Magalhães, founder and CEO of Europalco, said: “At Europalco, we love to innovate and surprise our clients. This event was especially challenging because of the space and the artist’s performance in the middle of the event. As always, we let our imagination run wild and came up with this innovative, complex, and exciting solution that pleased our client and surprised the guests.”