Formative’s Paramount solution

SOUTH AFRICA: Stage and production design company Formative recently assisted Aidan Bennets in providing technical management services for African global defence and aerospace organisation Paramount Group’s stand at the 2016 Africa Aerospace and Defence Exhibition (AAD). The exhibition was held at Waterkloof Air Force Base and takes place every two years.

Formative had worked on the Paramount Group stand at the 2014 edition of AAD and built the new stand based on those previous designs. On the audio side, the project specification called for even coverage that spilled into the aisles that surrounded the stand without intruding on neighbouring booths. ‘This called for a discrete truss-mounted down-firing solution, with a 3x3 grid of JBL PRX 710 power speakers run on separate sends to deliver maximum gain before feedback by isolating the various presentation areas from each other,’ explained Thomas Peters, technical project manager at Formative. ‘A neat stack of JBL VRX918 subs were mounted behind the screen to deliver the low-end rumble that gave the video content an imposing “acoustic mass”.’

One major alteration made to the 2016 booth design was the replacement of projection systems with LED technology. Rental company LEDVision supplied a pair of Roe BP 3.91mm screens reportedly capable of producing an almost 6K resolution. These were fed from d3 Technologies v2.5 Servers and run via Brompton M2 processing.

MGG Productions provided the lighting equipment used. ‘The design of the stand featured scale models of many of the Paramount Group’s flagship products, each individually and carefully downlit with 25 tightly-focussed Selecon SPX 15-35 Zoomspots, controlled by the d3 servers via an MA Lighting MA2 System with a Command Wing and a 4-port node,’ recalled Mr Peters. ‘The aim was to synchronise the highlighting of individual models to the ultra high resolution custom video content displayed on the screens, such that as a product was featured on the screen the respective model was illuminated on the stand.’

An additional 14 Robe Robin 1200 LEDWash fixtures were also employed for general coverage and dynamic key lighting, while 25 Robin 600 LEDWashes were implemented for area-specific lighting. These were obtained from Robe’s South African distributor, DWR Distribution.

Mr Peter utilised Luminex Gigacore switches to produce VLANs for the different network types and passing data while programming and operating the systems. He was able to run the setup via a bespoke iPad application.

www.aidanbennetts.co.za
www.dwrdistribution.co.za
www.formative.co.za
www.ledvision.co.za
www.mgg.co.za