CPL Camera Package For Lion's Den

Live video specialist Central Presentations Ltd. (CPL) supplied a full camera, vision mixing and control package to the Lion's Den stage at the 2013 Boomtown Fair – the UK's Maddest City - festival at Matterley Estate near Winchester in Hampshire.
The festival - under the artistic direction of Lak Mitchell and Chris Rutherford - is one of the UK's favourite, most unique and vibrant events and the Lion’s Den Stage is acclaimed for its awesome line up of established Reggae artists and emerging talent.
Boomtown is the world's biggest pop up city with over 1km of set/scenics and over 40 individual themed venues of which the Lion's Den is the largest.
CPL's Nick Diacre was on site as Production Manager for the Lion's Den, co-ordinating all technical production, site management and related business in this area, including Health & Safety.
The stunning 16 metre high Aztec temple themed Lion's Den performance area was designed and built by Si Carroll and his team from The Scenery Shop along with a sub-structure by Acorn Event Structures. It was clad with wood and polystyrene and highly realistically dressed, painted and treated with minute attention to detail … bringing amazing results.
The impressive stage structure measured 30 metres wide, was 12 metres deep, had a load bearing of 35 tonnes and took three weeks to construct!
CPL's five camera package comprised three Sony HXC100s, one on track-and-dolly located around the front of the stage thrust fitted with a Canon HK14 lens for dramatic wide shots – for which there were plenty of opportunity with eye-catching scenery in the background.
On the stage right was another HXC100 on a standard dolly and the third was out at the FOH position, complete with a Canon HJ40 lens for long shots and to capture the overall stage.
There was also a hand-held Sony EX3 on a wireless Camwave link onstage and the camera count was completed with a Panasonic AW100 hot head hung from the FOH structure, which was modelled like a smaller temple.
CPL supplied one of its Panasonic HS 410 PPUs for control and vision mixing, engineered by Andy Cox and Mike Court and all the cameras were sent to two Lighthouse R7 LED screens from Pictureworks.
The cameras were operated and the mix was cut by a team of Boomtown volunteers co-ordinated by Jaz Hoinka.
Bristol based AF Live supplied the L-ACOUSTICS KARA PA, Lion's Den lighting was designed by Will Howie and operated by Robin Barnaville with kit supplied by another Bristol based company, Utopium, who lit all the event’s major performance areas. Rigging was overseen by Liam Beech.
Two 10 Watt RGB lasers and a 20W green laser were supplied by Laser Hire from Birmingham and the pyro was designed and managed by Illuminarium, also from Bristol. This included custom-built flame bowls that constantly burnt and also blasted jets of flame into the air at key moments via a bespoke control system.
Nick Diacre has been involved in the Lion’s Den stage production for four of the five years since Boomtown started, however, this was the first time that he was responsible for co-ordinating multiple elements of the production …which he describes as "a real experience that saw some great teamwork between a collection of very imaginative, talented and dedicated individuals and companies who made it all look easy, plus some awesome music".
He continues: "Boomtown has really matured since the first event. There's a huge focus on making sure it's a truly visual and other worldly environment for the enjoyment of 30,000 party people."
Central Presentations Ltd
(MH/JP)