Kia Conference 2005

SFL provide complete production solution at the 2005 Kia Conference

After a very successful conference in 2004, Kia Motors, via 4D Productions, chose SFL to provide the complete technical production for their conference this year. The event was held in the same venue as previous years, so SF had the benefit of knowing the venue, enabling them to create the same type of conference again. However, as it was in the same venue, the brief was to make it look and feel different.

The day was split into two parts - the conference and the evening dinner/dance. The conference was based around an acted-out script which was set in a courtroom. To give it a 'courtroom' feel, the stage set was completely cladded out with wooden panelling and the walls that divide the room were brought in. The panelling was made to match the walls in the hotel. As there was only a 2 hour gap between the conference finishing and the evening do starting, we had the evening set already installed behind the conference set.

The sound comprised of d&b C6 with C7 sub for the main FOH, and d&b E3's for the side fills. This was all controlled via a Yamaha PM5D, with a Mix wizard running as a second desk for the conference only. As the room was made smaller for the conference, everything had to be kept neat and tidy. The monitor position and main FOH position were already completely set up for the evening - they were just wheeled into place during the room change-over.

The lighting consisted of over 20 Macs and various source four cans and profiles. When the courtroom set was removed, it revealed two 20m-wide screens on either side of the stage, which displayed projected images and lighting effects. This provided the backdrop for the stage, and due to the vast size of the screens, it was very easy to change the atmosphere of the stage and the room, simply by changing a lighting state. On either side of the stage there were curved towers, with cloth coverings stretched over them. Behind these, Richard had put lengths of chroma banks, which enabled him to create dramatic lighting changes to the set. There were also another 4 uprights of chroma bank dotted around the stage, which added even more depth to it, and meant that the stage had a different look to last year.

The video was needed for the conference to show camera images of the courtroom action and also to show video footage evidence and graphical stats. There were 3 Sony D50 cameras being mixed on an MX70. Playback came from beta with live running backups, and the presentations came from PowerPoint, again with a live running backup. The main screen control was run from an Analogue Way Eventix - this box was great at doing the titling and the PIP's. The projectors were 10K Christies with 5K running backups. The evening used the cameras only and each of these were iso'd to DVCam for editing after the event.