Gear from Martin Professional added sparkle to the annual meeting of the PBS television network at the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort in Miami, FL. The event is the largest meeting in public broadcasting and is the place where production companies present new programs to the public television community.
For the meeting, two grand ballrooms at the Fontainebleau were transformed into oases of colored animation by International Entertainment Production and Meeting Presentation Group (IEP MPG), a Baltimore-Washington-based staging company that provides video, audio, lighting, and show coordination services for corporate meetings and special events. Lighting designers Jonathan Goldstein and Brett Gross were called on to create the lighting for the two rooms.
In the first ballroom, what Goldstein calls the “talking-heads” room, the president of PBS and other dignitaries gave speeches and keynote addresses. LD/programmer Gross dressed the room in decorative effects from ten MAC 2000 Profile units while eight MAC 600 wash lights were used to uplight a surrounding drape in various shades of color. PBS and Miami city logos were also projected onto surrounding walls.
The second ballroom, the 'meal room', was where the all-important presentations took place. Ragdoll Productions, producer of the well-known Teletubbies, presented a new program, Boo Bah, which features five characters who live inside the nucleus of a cell, wear fiber optic suits, and travel around in the "Boo Ball".
Goldstein's challenge was to produce a video-like look around the Boo Ball, in order to make it seem as if it was traveling. Instead of projecting a static image, he used the animation wheels of four MAC 2000 Performance units to "bring people into the Boo Ball world," he says. Using custom star gobos to achieve the effect, he animated each gobo, grouped the gobos together, and then angled each individual shutter to give depth perception to the look. The projection was then synched to an audio track. The result was a star path that looked realistic, as if the Boo Ball itself was moving. In order to bring people into the room during the presentations initial phase, Goldstein projected dot breakups from ten MAC 2000 Profile and a color wash from 14 MAC 600 wash lights onto 22’ white silk curtains.
Singer Naomi Judd hosted and performed at the opening night event along with country musician Ralph Stanley. They performed beneath 10 MAC 2000 Performance 24 MAC 600 Wash, 10 MAC 2000 Profile and 20 MAC 300 Wash units. Together with Naomi and Ralph Stanley, singer/actress Julie Andrews was also in attendance as part of a series pitch called The Appalachians.