Gearhouse SA Supplies 2009 Loerie Awards

Gearhouse South Africa has supplied the technical infrastructure - including rigging, sound, lighting, video, media, power and backline - for the 31st Annual Loerie Awards.
This is the major element of the Loeries Festival, anecdotally considered the coolest, best and most anticipated party weekend for media professionals in the southern hemisphere!
Themed Feed Your Ego, the 2009 event poked fun at the sometimes egocentric aspects of the ad industry - with the aid of content projected from Gearhouse's suite of powerful, cutting-edge Christie projectors.
The two nights of awards were staged in Cape Town's Good Hope, a 6,000 capacity theatre venue, and Gearhouse was working for production company H-Factor, who created the production design for the event. The first night's awards were related to print media and communication design, and the second to TV, radio and digital/electronic. Both were recorded by SABC for broadcast.
Technical production was by Steve Collins and the project was managed on site for Gearhouse by Richard Blamire and co-ordinated in the office by Cape Town branch manager Charl Smit. They worked with a site crew of 45.
The 45-metre wide staging concept was devised by Heloise Fourie and Andrew Shelly of H-Factor and implemented by Leon Erasmus from Cape Town-based LEG Studios, to resemble a giant, abstracted PCB, complete with five projection screens.
Gearhouse Media's Chris Grandin collaborated closely with show producer Andrew Shelly from H-Factor to edit and produce a smooth flowing animated media stream for the two awards shows, making good use of their fleet of Christie Roadster HD18K's, S+16K's and DS+8K's.
Two wide rear projection screens were installed at the back of the stage, next to one another, measuring 12 metres wide by 6.8 high and 8 metres wide by 6.8 metres wide, with areas masked by various set pieces.
About 50 square metres of LED panelling provided by LEDVision was integrated into the set as digital scenery and another three 4.5m x 4.5m projection surfaces were asymmetrically positioned to the sides of the set.
The screens were fed by a total of seven stacked Christie projectors - two HD18Ks, two S+16Ks and three 8Ks. The larger format projectors were fitted with 1.45-1.8:1 lens, while the 8K's were equipped with long throw 4.5-7.1 lens. All projectors took DVI fibre optic feeds.
The content - including special logos and Loerie idents and Awards stings was supplied by two different agencies, juju (for Friday) and Wicked Pixels (for Saturday) under the creative direction of H-Factor and The Loerie Awards.
juju also collaborated with the artists to produce graphics for the bands for both nights.
Grandin used as a multi-display system to complete all the editing and compositing, sending six outputs to the processor, which also received camera ISO feeds and a mix from SABC's HD OB truck.
He confirmed that the clients were pleased with the strength and quality of the projection.
In addition, Gearhouse also supplied full lighting and sound rigs. Designed by Philip Chames, the lighting rig was partially flown and supported by various elements of an extensive ground support system. This was installed to help get points and scenery supports in exactly the right places and to boost the available rigging facilities, with some points also suspended from the venue's roof.
The requirement was to light both the stage - which was action-packed with awards presentations, guest bands and DJs - and the audience for TV and live enjoyment.
Sound was designed by John Griesel and in addition to the L'Acoustics PA included Yamaha M7 mixing consoles linked via an Optocore digital multi, six channels of hand-held Shure UHFs and six channels of beltpacks and full DJ rig.
Gearhouse also supplied a generic set of backline that was used by all the bands, while Gearhouse Power used a combination of house power and two 300KVA RandAir generators to power the production.
(KMcA/BMcC)