Mascol has been pleased to be the conference production partner for a leading technology publishing company for the last 4 years. Each year we work on at least 3 events with them in various London venues.
In April 2014 we provided the Conference Production for a two day event in central London at the Grand Connaught Rooms. The Grand Hall was used for the main conference and the layout was cabaret style for a 200+ audience. The adjoining Balmoral Room was used for Exhibitors and catering.
Both the Audience and the Presenters were made up of an International mix but predominantly from North America and Europe. English was the universal Language so no simultaneous interpretation was required for this event.
The client requirement for the conference was for the audience to be able to clearly see some quite detailed presentations on screen and to also be able to see an image of the presenter on screen as well. Each day was divided up into 4 sessions with 4-5 presenters giving talks followed by a panel session discussion and Q&A with the audience.
Conference Production : AV Technology
We provide a back projection wood panel Set with 2 projection screen apertures of 10’x7’6”. This was built on the venue stage to assist in giving the necessary height. The bottom of each screen was 5’6” off the top of the stage so adequate height for a Lectern and top table in front.
To enable different images on each screen we operated 2 seamless switchers with all sources split and fed into each switcher. The left hand screen predominantly displayed a live camera image sourced by 2 full HD Sony Cameras. One locked off at the rear of the room for a wide shot and the other with a camera operator for close ups. Both camera feeds were recorded with sound fed direct from the sound desk for subsequent release on Youtube and as an historical record.
The right hand screen predominantly displayed the presenters’ material such as PowerPoint or KeyNote slides and videos sourced from pc or apple laptops and a DVD player. During Panel sessions and Q&A both screens displayed the camera images.
Due to the length of the room two 50” plasma screens were positioned 2/3rds of the way back to act as repeaters for the presentations feed. An additional two 42” plasmas with sound were positioned in the exhibition area to allow the exhibitors to keep up to date with the progress of the conference.
Distribution to all projectors and plasmas was made through cat5 conversion kits and distribution amplifiers.
Sound was provided by our Turbosound speaker system with three delay lines. Six sennheiser G3 radio lapel microphones and two radio hand held microphones backed up with a static lectern microphone were used by the presenters and audience. Further sound feeds were from the computers, dvd player, ipod and cd player. A Yamaha LS9 digital sound desk was used for sound mixing.
Simple generic stage lighting was used for this event as there was no colour changing or moving light requirement.
The client also had a requirement for still photographs to be taken of all presenters and some general audience and exhibition shots. Mascol provided a Stills cameraman and equipment as required. All still photographs and the video footage were labeled and indexed and copied to portable hard drives to give to the client at the end of the event.