Over 4km of sunset orange carpet, a staggering quantity of drapes and starcloth, custom-built scenery, 140kW of Turbosound PA and tens of thousands of fairy lights converted the Three Mills car park and three main film studios into a stunning spatial wonderland. Blackout’s project manager, Kevin Monks, collaborated with Faceparty’s Dave Bamforth to realise Bamforth’s creative ideas, before the Blackout team dressed all four themed dance areas of the vast site.
For the Veranda arena and main entrance, a custom-built 20m x 7m Orange Trevira Festoon drape formed a backdrop behind the outdoor stage. Another 37m x 2m area of the same orange fabric was rigged from the perimeter fencing to blend with the carpet, transforming the car park into a fizzy orange wonderland. Blackout’s Kevin Monks explained: "It was a challenging task - particularly rigging the exterior walls v- but the effort was worth it for the end result."
The entrance to the extreme-themed Rainforest zone (planted for the event using thousands of real plants and trees) was framed in starcloth. More starcloth drape inside the area created a magical galaxy-like effect, augmenting the tropical ‘fantasy island’ atmosphere. To add contrast to the heavy industrial Garage room, Blackout used a dramatic combination of red velour and starcloth to dress the dance stage. Lighting was supplied by HFM Lighting and designed by Jaime Fletcher. The combined systems featured over 200 intelligent fixtures - a powerful combination of Clay Paky Golden HPEs and MiniScans and High End Dataflash strobes were deployed, along with Martin’s MAC 500s. Over 20 Studio Due City Colors illuminated the exterior Veranda in a myriad of colours. Lighting control in all four areas was from Avolites Pearl desks. In addition, HFM supplied 16 20" mirror balls and thousands of fairy lights completing the party effect.
Britannia Row, supplied three Turbosound systems for each of the main dance areas. Designed by Roland Oliver, over 90 Turbosound Flashlight and Floodlight cabinets were combined to maximum effect. The DJ positions were each set up with Vestax mixers, Technics decks and Pioneer CDJ 1000 CD players.
(Lee Baldock)
