XL Video supply gear for National Television Awards

XL Video supplied projection and playback equipment for the stunning and stylish curved screen that was integral to Bill Lazlett’s highly aesthetic set design for the 2004 National Television Awards, staged at the Royal Albert Hall.
It was the first time that XL has been involved in this high profile event. Lazlett recommended the St Albans-based video rental and production specialists as a supplier to the show’s producers, Indigo Television, and the project was managed for XL by Paul Wood.
The screen was custom made for XL by ECT from Matt Brite material to Lazlett’s design, co-ordinated by Wood. It measured 29 metres wide and was 10 metres high at the stage right end and 2 metres high at stage left, curving around the rear of the stage. It was rigged onto a special piece of metalwork made by set builders Atlantic Enterprises and stretched over supporting frames down the sides and along the bottom to stretch it completely taught.
The projection equipment was 10 Barco ELM R18 projectors, with five projectors overlaid in two stacks for optimum brightness, situated in the RAH’s Grand Tier boxes.
Taking a ‘big canvass approach’, screen content was created for the show by Richard Turner and his colleague Jan Ostrowski. It included a series of attractive, subtle liquid abstract effects washed across the screens in different colours, which were matched into the lighting scenes being used on other parts of the set. This was achieved using a series of softwares including PhotoShop and After Effects
Onscreen graphics described each Award being presented, and there was also a special short graphics sequence illustrating the public voting process and how the winners were chosen. A few weeks before the event, Turner and Ostrowski shot special footage of one of the Awards, which was integrated into the show.
The images were soft edge blended using Sweet Pea, which allows very fine control in shaping the edges of the images and also the creation of very specific masking. It was crucial that there was minimum spillage from projection onto any of the other areas of the set.
Clarke Anderson handled the technical co-ordination of Graphics for Turner on the day. The content was stored on two GVG Profile hard drives and mixed by Turner using a Magic DaVE, located in the 021 outside-broadcast truck, under the direction of TV director Russell Norman. All equipment was triggered via a Dataton control system.
XL Video also supplied two 16 x 9 feet side screens, fed by Barco SLM G5 projectors, with an Awards packages and stage IMAG relay mix from the 021 OB unit, filming in real time for broadcast on ITV. XL’s crew consisted of lead projectionist John Edwards, Stuart Heaney and Toby Ginn.
(GB)