The Cheltenham Times Literature Festival 2011

Production AV were proud to have provided Video Solutions for three venues on the Montpellier Gardens site for the Cheltenham Times Literature Festival for 2011. Providing Full HD cameras, Full HD vision mixing and data switching equipment to Full HD Barco projectors ensured the images were crisp and detailed.

New for 2011, The Times Cheltenham Literature festival moved to from a range of venues across the town to the new tented village on Montpellier Gardens on the edge to the town centre. Giving the Festival a range of new venues, from the intimate setting of the 300 seat Salon, through the larger Qwerty venue up to the flagship 1000+ seat venue hosted in a fantastic large temporary structure, the site provided a a new dynamic to the event.

The Forum

The video solution for the flagship venue on the site was centred around the 6m Wide Screen with Full HD Barco Projection fed from a Barco Screen ProII. The Other sources came into the Screen ProII at Full HD resolutions, including the camera feed mixed on the Panasonic AV-HS400 vision mixer, from our Sony Full HD EX3 cameras.

To assist with sight line issues and to minimise on the seating take for the high profile events, Production AV provided a hot head system to enable the cameras to be remotely controlled from the backstage video control area.

Our knowledge and experience in processing and handling Full HD signal paths meant that dealing with the long cable runs required in the venue is second nature for the Production AV team, so when adjustments to the build schedule were necessitated, it was no hassle.

Qwerty

The second venue that Production AV provided a solution for was ‘Qwerty’. Offering a slightly more intimate venue seating 300 people this was based on a more traditional but well dressed temporary structure.

The solution was based around a Standard 4:3 solution based on the Barco CLM R10+  10,000 lumen series projector fed a DVI signal over Fibre to ensure pixel perfect transmission of the signal from the array of sources such as laptops and DVD players from a Barco Screen ProII switcher.

The Salon

The smallest venue on the site was in some ways the most challenging, partly due to the fact that the seating was designed in the round to give the audience the connection to the guest speakers. Providing a solution based around Christie Projection and augmented with plasma screens hung on wing trusses to give better viewing angles for those seated round on the sides of the raked seating.

“Fantastic Working with the team from Production AV”

It was a pleasure working with the team from the Cheltenham Festivals in the run up to, and during the Festival. Feedback after the event from Adrian Hensley, the Festival Production Manager, was generous and glowing – “I wasn’t sure that everything was going to come together – New site, venues, contractors – a lot of unknowns. But the Production AV team were superb – you just got on and did exactly what you said you would do, and without any fuss or problems. It was a pleasure, and I look forward to working with the team from Production AV again in the future”.

We’re looking forward to being involved in 2012.

If you have an event that you require a comprehensive video solution for a single venue to multiples venues over a long period of time, then please do get in touch either by email or by telephone on Local rate 0845 37 000 24 or 01452 372728 .