Christmas Party – Yorkshire Event Centre

Brief

Create a ‘Hollywood’ style Christmas party for 860 people including full AV production services including audio, lighting, video, furniture, rigging and props for this event, alongside services such as our very popular Magic Mirror & Dancefloor.

The event, held at Yorkshire Event Centre in Harrogate required extensive planning & pre-production with considerations towards power consumption, load point weights, cable runs & much more.

Given the brief from the client, it was up to Premier to design and make reality a design that stands out and will give the guests a night they will never forget.

 

Process

A 3D design was created in house and sent to the client for approval, as well as an event proposal and itemised quotation. Once this was all signed off, our team got to work with turning the visual into a reality.

A separate drinks reception area was created in the venue using black wool serge drape and ensured that guests could enjoy pre-dinner drinks without seeing the main room.

During the pre-production stage, our team looked at all the components that would be required to make the event, these components were broken down into smaller groups, so we could fully analyse what options were available.

To ensure that the event was on brief, we looked at utilising a number of props which could be situated around the hall to give guests the ‘Hollywood’ experience.

As this event required almost 7000 individual items, we spent considerable time making sure we knew exactly what was required and how it would work, to then specify equipment and configurations. A CAD file for the Yorkshire event centre consisting of all important information regarding positions, truss, stage, power drops, catering & drape locations was available and helped make sure all ideas for the event were realistic and possible.

Considering audio requirements early on was important and it was decided that to ensure coverage across the entire venue, we would fly and ground stack our in house L-Acoustics KARA. For stage foldback Premier also chose to use L’Acoustics, this time it was a mix of 8XT & 12XT speakers.

Premier also supplied Crew & Engineers for the event in Yorkshire, with a 2 day install, it was imperative to assure the correct crew were on site, ready to carry out their tasks, within a given time frame.

 

Equipment Used

Premier deployed industry standard kit including items from L-Acoustics, Elation, Prolyte, Robe & many more. Our in house L’Acoustics KARA & SB18’s were great for this venue, we flew 6 aside KARA and ground stacked SB18’s along with 3 more KARA aside. In doing this we could draw as many people as possible towards the 46ft x 46ft dancefloor, yes that makes 284 panels!

Above this huge dancefloor could be found a circle truss structure which consisted of generic stage wash fixtures, Elation’s Artiste Davinci & Chauvet’s Rogue R2 Wash moving heads. Our main focus for lighting was the stage and here we had Robe’s Patt 2013 alongside Elation Beam 5R Extreme’s on dropbars, all together it made for a fancy event and our lighting designer had a lot of fun!

For video we proposed and installed 2x Panasonic 5.6k HD projectors located on projection trusses flown by Premier which projected live camera feeds onto screens left & right of stage. Additional to the already awesome circular truss structure, Premier had their own Hothead camera package working its magic, with easy control and ability to auto focus this made sure all guests could see all the action.

Pre-event its evident that there were going to be awards, and so our team preset the cameras to look for the winner, so when it was announced, we could get the screen to show the winner straight away.

To ensure reliable power was available for lighting, Premier made use of the Avolites Art Rack 2000 which has interchangeable modules for dimmable & hot power. A simple patch bay on this unit allows us to route dim & hot power along the same Socapex making for easy setup and is simple to manage. The Art Rack can show current draw across all 3 phases allowing us to operate efficiently and safely.

To connect all these lights & dimmers Premier made use of the 4-way & 8-way E Node which effectively takes Art Net in and spits out DMX, these E-Nodes allow us to specify what universes go where and gives much more capability in a lighting rig of this size.

 

Stats

Total Equipment Value – £453,900.89

Total Weight – 16.785Kg

Transport: 3x 44T Artic

Local Crew: 14 for install & 10 for derig

Premier Crew: 11 Technicians & 2 Production Managers

6980 Items Provided

 

Video