The set of the recent Stand Up To Cancer live TV show was creatively imagined with the assistance of VER-Live. The show was staged in Methodist Central Hall Westminster, which presented the technical difficulty of having very limited weight loading capabilities and was “a very difficult venue to put scenery into”, commented production designer, Julian Healy.
Healy and content designer Luke Halls decided that the ‘totaliser moments’, where the money raised throughout the show is revealed, would involve the audience who completely surrounded the set. Each audience member holding a tablet screen aloft would provide one pixel square of the screen upon which the totals raised would be displayed.
“In order to achieve what I wanted, I needed a lot of LED product and a lot of screens,” Healy said. “I wanted to break away from just squares and do something a little bit different, so instead of one big screen I wanted to create an explosion of several fragmented screens.”
The set comprised a BO 6mm LED screen floor presentation area. The focal point of the show was the central screen and the exploded and fragmented surrounding panels were designed to look as if they were floating, so as to prevent the look jarring against the venue’s traditional setting.
Initially the central screen was designed with 5mm tiles, but difficulties rigging the product tilted on both axes provoked a change to the same 9mm Win Vision Air tiles which were to be used for the surrounding screens. The LED tiles were easier to rig, the company reports, and were much lighter in weight which eased the strain on the venue.
Behind the audience seating area, the exploded design was achieved with Martin LC 40mm LED tiles and the smaller platforms were clad in X-15mm LED screen.
VER-Live’s Adrian Offord commented: “It was a great pleasure to work on such an iconic show with Julian Healy. One of the main challenges was getting a suitable screen to fit within the weight restraint of the building without reducing Julian’s vision – and the carbon fibre base 9mm Air proved to be the perfect product.”
