A-Plant, a leading UK supplier of specialist equipment for construction, events and infrastructure markets, were rebranding to become Sunbelt Rentals UK, unifying its British brands under one roof. To mark the move, Sunbelt held an event for 850 delegates to highlight the new branding and present plans for the future. The brief was to fully immerse delegates into the branding change, but without revealing the change across the whole morning of the event. Delegates were welcomed with A-Plant visuals and branding for the first part of the conference, during which time the entire event was re-branded in time for the reveal of the new brand.
FIX8Group was commissioned by Fresh Approach to design and build a lighting, audio and immersive projection solution for the event, that would be “like no other” previous A-Plant conference.
The challenge
The event presented an extremely tight schedule, with load in, rehearsals and live event condensed into a very short time frame. Having such as short space of time meant the FIX8Group team had to meticulously pre-plan and carefully design each element to enable a fast build on site.
The projection screens were unusually large and fundamental to the entire design of the project - installing these was a challenge, especially with time restrictions. The screens also needed to be wrapped around the back of the central stage, which meant that careful planning was required to ensure the loudspeakers, projectors and rigging didn’t obscure the projected content, whilst equally ensuring optimal placement of all equipment. Equally, the FIX8Group team needed to rig, line up and blend 12 projectors in a very short space of time.
The solution
FIX8Group designed a specialist rigging and tensioning system, so that all the screens were hung and ready for projector alignment within four hours.
A drape line was hung across the entire venue to build a complete black box ‘venue within a venue’, so that during the event all that could be seen was content. We also incorporated back of house corridors for venue staff use so that there could be no disturbance during the show, and all delegates would remain completely engaged throughout.
FIX8Group provided all production for the main plenary: lighting, video and audio. To ensure that the experience was immersive and engaging, as per our brief, we created a faceted horseshoe-shaped projection screen with a width of 78m and a height of 4m. This encompassed the audience ensuring that regardless of seating position; each delegate was completely immersed within the show.
The complete resolution was a massive 21,064 x 1080 pixels, allowing the content designers a huge canvas to work with. Our team specified twelve Panasonic PT-RZ31K projectors, with video processing powered by three Barco E2 Gen 2, giving us flexibility in content placement and precise control of the super-wide canvas.Content was driven by our Green Hippo Boreal servers.
We specified Meyer Sound MINA compact line arrays to provide even coverage across the venue from the smallest cabinets possible, and for lighting we chose Chauvet Maverick MK2 Profile and Wash fixtures, SQM Q7 and Robe MegaPointe to create highly contrasting looks,all designed to complement the video content and further the immersive delegate experience.
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Ben Hyman, Senior Project Manager
Conclusion
This was a project that required attention to detail and an array of equipment that would convey the key messages for the client in an impressive and truly immersive manner, and we delivered.
The event ran seamlessly, thanks to our pre-planning and forward thinking. The main aim was to make a lasting impression for delegates about the new brand, and we achieved this and so much more.
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