Well, I admit it. Last year, I didn't know who Rascal Flatts was, and there wasn't a single country album in my collection. Three country concerts and a year later, my country CD collection is steadily growing, Sacramento, CA's #1 country station has a permanent preset on my radio dial, and I'm suddenly in Nashville — backstage at the 2007 Country Music Television (CMT) Music Awards. It's pretty surprising what a year can do for one's musical perspective.

Host Jeff Foxworthy during the live broadcast

Even more surprising was the way that the CMT production crew prepared Nashville's Curb Event Center for one of the year's premier live broadcasts. Under normal circumstances, the Curb Event Center is a mid-sized arena and multipurpose facility seating approximately 5,000 on the campus of Belmont University. Yet for the 2007 CMT Awards on April 16, at least a third of the seats were tucked away to provide room for the set's layered proscenium and thrust.

In addition, with only a 44' ceiling to work with, the challenge was to create the illusion of height and width and essentially transform a college basketball arena into a dynamic and visually rich palette for the high-definition lens.

Color, Dimension, And Slivers Of Video

To meet the challenge, Nashville-based I-Mag Video joined forces with CMT, executive producer Audrey Morrissey of Camouflage Films, and veteran designers Anton Goss and Simon Miles. Based on the success and visual impact of last year's CMT Awards show, Goss expanded the design into a creative array of projection, movable “slivers” of abstract video, a large-format video wall, decorative LED trim, and wooden “slats” of background scenery. To maintain the highest degree of visual interest (with hardly any two-camera shots alike), the set had multiple focal points for performers, announcers, and presenters, along with sweeping jib moves.

To realize Goss' concept for the set, I-Mag supplied eight movable columns of Barco D7 tiles, two movable D7 headers, one large Barco OLite 510 wall, three OLite 510 towers, and two 18'×24' projection screens using double-stacked Barco FLM R20+ projectors. To cap the design, Barco's new transparent MiTrix modules were used as the front fascia for the stairs and as a decorative “handrail” that framed the performers on the thrust. “There's something really cool about MiTrix,” says Goss, “because it's designed in a 7.5“ form factor that can be placed in stairs. Of course, the engineers designed it for multiple vertical tiles, but they didn't think about placing it in horizontal strips. It's an interesting real-world application.”

To provide color and dimension to an otherwise small (and monochrome) arena, LD Simon Miles used Vari-Lite VL5s, VL6s, VL1000s, VL2416s, and VL3000 spot fixtures; Martin MAC 2000 Wash units; and Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12s — all run on a Vari-Lite Virtuoso DX2 console. The lighting was programmed by Harry Sangmeister, with gear supplied by Vx Inc. via PRG Nashville and MTV Networks Nashville. The show's rigger was Mike Linn, with rigging equipment supplied by Atlanta Rigging Systems.

To deliver the simulcast in SD and HD, CMT (a subsidiary of MTV Networks), pulled in MTV's new “Pegasus” mobile HD truck. “The interesting thing about doing this show in HD,” notes Miles, “is the ability to render color more accurately than we used to do in standard def. It's a more forgiving environment — particularly for music — and you can go wild with color and contrast.”

The “Go-To” Guys

More video was used on this production than on any CMT Awards show before

Tony Macre is director of engineering for I-Mag Video, with credits that include concerts for Toby Keith and Rascal Flatts and video support for the past two presidential inaugurations.

“This is the third year we've worked on the CMT Awards, and there's a lot more video on this particular show than ever before,” explains Macre. “We have 601 SDI running to every single LED element, and we're using about 20 Barco digitizers overall. Each LED element is fed by routers in the Pegasus truck, so the TD can place any video content anywhere — whether it's video from the 12 Ikegami cameras or abstract backgrounds from the Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers.” Video was programmed by Adrian Dickey using three Hippotizers in dual mode, controlled by the Virtuoso console. The media servers were supplied by Vx Inc.

“The Barco products are very friendly as far as processing goes, especially the way that we can easily map images into the columns that Anton designed,” he continues. “This is just an amazing set, and combined with the moving LED columns, I think we really met the goal of ‘wowing’ them even more this year. We love working with CMT — they're always taking us in new directions, and it's really a treat to push the edge. Honestly, when no one else knows how to do it, we're the one's to go to, and that makes us very proud to be working with CMT and the designers on this broadcast.”