Themed Awards Evening

We were approached by Nuffield Health and asked to provide AV support for their upcoming awards evening at Heythrop Park

Having worked with the client before and built up a good working relationship, the planning process was relatively straightforward.

The awards evening was part of a larger 2 day conference being held at Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire.  The venue have an in house AV department to look after the conference side of the event.  We supplied uplighting and full colour gobo projection to complement the in house systems, which were controlled by the venue’s  technicians, allowing us to focus solely on the awards evening element which was to be medieval themed.

Following on from a site visit at the venue, our project manager went away and produced an itemised proposal for all of the elements that would be required to meet the brief. We created this in a storyboard format, which followed the journey for the delegates from arriving at pre dinner drinks to the awards themselves.

The medieval theme began for delegates after they had finished the first day of the conference. The client had arranged for a medieval costume to be placed in each delegate’s bedroom, which they were to wear for the evening. Costumes were also provided for all of the Premier engineers who stayed on site for the evening.

As guests made their way to the drinks reception outside, we placed two freestanding medieval style banners, which were used as props for the paparazzi photographers. To complete the look we also flew a medieval styled flag above the entrance door.

As guests entered the drinks reception they walked past a ‘living model’ who was dressed for the occasion. We fabricated a shield for the model to hold throughout, which had the company’s logo on the front.

To complete the medieval look we also sourced and positioned a mixture of medieval props such as life size medieval knights, pillory stocks, 7ft candelabra’s and a rustic looking market stall, complete with potato sacks. A magician used the market stall to keep the crowd entertained, signage for him came in the form of a wooden plaque which we hand carved in advance of the event.

Guests were treated to a medieval banquet for the main element of the evening – the awards ceremony itself. The evening took the form of entertainment, a course of food and then a set of awards.

For the video element of the production we utilised an ultra short throw projector to display the video content on a wall in the room. Video content came in the form of clips of monasteries, the awards themselves, hot head cameras as well as a live feed from a cameraman, which we had focusing on the magician and the award winners. Redundancy and the ability to seamlessly switch between video feeds was covered by our Analogue Way Pulse rack with inbuilt preview monitors.

Lighting for the evening was provided by 8 of our ultra versatile Elation Platinum Spot 5R Pro moving heads. These were positioned on 3m tall Prolyte H30V truss podiums, which were wrapped in hessian to maintain the medieval theme. Cabling was a breeze due to the wireless capabilities of the Platinum Spots, which incorporate wireless DMX. This was all programmed and ran on the night using an Avolites Quartz desk by our lighting engineer.

A follow spot was also placed on top of a 3m tall platform (also decorated to blend in with the theme) to pick out the award winners and follow them up to the stage.

For the presenters of the awards and the DJ we built two 3m x 3m stages. The presenters stage was supplied with a ‘scroll’ styled lectern and the DJ was provided with an ‘alter’ styled DJ booth from which to perform behind.

Audio for the event was covered with a mixture of 12XT and 8XT speakers with two SB18 subwoofers for low-end reinforcement. We provided lectern microphones for the awards as well as hand held wireless microphones and DPA headsets, which were used later on in the evening for the medieval ‘dance off’. All of the sound was distributed through our Yamaha LS9-32 digital desk.

To make communication between our engineers and the client easy on the night we provided a number of walkie talkies with ear pieces. With there being very little phone reception on site these were invaluable.

After the awards had been presented one of our Corporate DJs took to the decks and kept the dance floor full until the end of the event at 00:30.

Overall the event was a huge success and the client was delighted, here is what she had to say afterwards:

Hello gents

The evening went flawlessly, the whole thing was done in your stride and the feedback from the organising team was so positive, I was brimming with pride for you all.

I can only say that I can never and will never do conference without you. Whatever my ideas, you always deliver that and exceed it tenfold.

Thank you again, and to the team.