Popular Music Competition

The PMC is Twyford’s biggest music concert. The idea of the PMC is to showcase musical talent ,which isn’t classical or orchestral, from Twyford. This year there were songs ranging from pop songs, rap songs and songs which some people had written by themselves. The musical talent this year was very high and it was a close fight for first place.

 

For this year, I once again proposed 3 different designs. Although none of these designs ended up being the final design I still thought I would show them as they are part of the development process to the final project. When I was designing I wrote up about two of the three plans which I will present below. For my first idea I had the idea of having a matrix of Ayrton Magic Panels at the back of the stage. I loved the idea of having video displayed on the wall behind the act. This was my first design so I put alot of effort into trying to work out specifics and how everything in terms of lighting would work. My Second idea was to have a semi circle truss at both the back and the top of the truss. My final design was to have two straight trusses at the back with Chauvet Nexus AQ 5×5 on the back. In between the panels were Chauvet Rouges. The top of the truss included 4 Clay-Paky Beyes. Unfortunately this design was not fully documented and I only have pictures of the renders. This is due to a discussion on about the design and budget for the PMC which prompted the immediate start on designing the final stage plot.

This year I put in alot of work to trying to provide a stage design that integrated lighting. I wanted the lighting to reflect the concepts which printed onto the posters for the PMC. The poster incorporated a broken record onto the design and I wanted to try and represent this in the stage design, so I started jotting down a few ideas on pieces of paper. I eventually came up with a design which had a shattered glass look at the back. The panels on the back were then going to be projected onto by a Epson EB-Z9875U projector. This projector was in front of the band so we had to be careful about where we put the panels as some of the projections might hit the band or instruments. Due to this reason we had to scale back drastically with the amount of panels we hang. This was the first time we had done any projection mapping like this before. Around the venue we have 4 camera. One static on top of the drums, one for a wide shot from the back and two close up camera. These camera were fed into a Black Magic Design ATEM Studio 4K Video switcher via SDI. We have a person switching between camera for the projections. The output of the ATEM video switcher was then fed into an IMac running Resolume. The operator had Resolume already set up for them so that they could just switch between cameras and video content. Some of the video content didn’t work well with the lighting, so that is something that we have to look at for the next concert. We set up surfaces on Resolume so that only the surfaces provided would have content mapped to it. The output of Resolume was then fed into the Epson projector.

Around the shattered projection surfaces was a semi-circular curved truss. The GLP lights along with the Cores were situated on this truss. The aim of this design was to try and make the space feel like a big gig. There were some limitations onto what I could do in terms of design since alot of the viewers complain if a bright light sweeps over them. I tried to keep the lights off the audience as much as possible however I think that having lights sweeping over you really pulls you into the moment and makes you feel like part of the concert instead of just a watcher. The shattered glass was also echoed on the roof in the trusses. 32 SGM LT-100 led bars created another shattered glass look. I wanted to really focus on the stage design this year and try and make everything from marketing to the stage feel like one set. The SGM LT-100s were connected via ethernet cables to the desk. The ethernet cable was fed into the DOT2 which Ambersphere has leant us for a test period. I wrote a review on the DOT2 and how I found it during my two week test period. You can find the review by clicking the link below.

I think the best parts of the PMC for me was being able to use and learn some new gear. I loving being able to use the DOT2 it was quick and powerful. The GLP Washes were also an amazing light. I loved being able to wash the stage completely to having a thin 3 degree beam. The LED in the light packed a punch and it allowed for both saturated and pastel colours. Below are some of the pictures from the PMC. Some have been taken on an Iphone and some have been taken by a professional photographer.