After three weeks, three cities and 64 shows, the new Range Rover Evoque has been well and truly launched to the public.
Starting in Earl’s Court, London, then to the NEC in Birmingham and finishing at the GMEX in Manchester, the show was designed to cause hysteria amongst the invited guests with fast paced music, energetic dancers and attractive models.
The show was produced by Doll Events and managed by Paul Devine who called upon Delta to provide the surround sound system, ELP to supply lighting, ERP to install the laser system, Stage One to implement the automation and XL Video to realise the complex video requirements.
From a technical standpoint alone, this has to be one of the most impressive car launches to date:
The guests enter what appears to be an enclosed cinema area with raked seating and a large projection screen with the words “Evoque LIVE” on, all surrounded by blue set panels.
Once seated and the big green button is pushed, the lights dim and mechanical and atmospheric noises are heard all around. The message on the large projection screen disappears and the raked seating starts to rotate to the left. As the guests are rotated, video images of flocking birds follow round on what are now realised as 18 more projection screens.
When the audience is facing 180 degrees from where they started, a stunning cityscape appears with wireframe images of the Evoque driving through. The city scape is then covered with rain and as it is, some of the screens begin to move away from the crowd revealing men in black striking poses in silhouette.
Following this dramatic introduction there are three sections to interpret each of the three specifications available:
“Pure” is shown with the screens all fully retreated in white forming a background for the first wave of models, all dressed in white.
“Dynamic” starts with the crowd rotating left to reveal three men in red, backed by a sunset. After a change in music they break pose and perform a variety of impressive free running moves around the stage area with the audience rotating to follow. The performance is then handed over to the dancers who perform an energetic routine to a fast paced and catchy track with the screens showing 18 different video clips of the car driving around a city. This culminates in the dancers grouping together centre stage and lowering down to the floor.
“Prestige” is represented by a ballet dancer who is revealed as the dynamic dancers reach the floor who then glide away across the stage. She performs a solo piece and then interacts with the two male dancers either side of stage. The ballet is backed by images of the dancer herself surrounded by smoke with only 6 of the screens retreated. This is followed by another show from the models, now in evening attire.
The show finishes with the dancers returning to the stage to more energetic music backed by a medley of images from the previous sections. They are then joined by the models and free runners who all run round either side of the audience to where the larges projection screen was. As the audience is rotated back to their start position it becomes apparent that the screen has gone and behind it are two Range Rover Evoques, back lit with intense white and surrounded by the performers.
Basic Monkey provided two of the four Catalyst media servers required to drive the 19x projectors, the content for which was created by Colin Rozee in collaboration with Nigel Catmur who designed the slick and impressive lighting.
James was on site to manage the video team of Jim Fisher (Projectionist) and Alex Roberts (Assistant Projectionist) for Tim Riley at XL Video. James was also tasked with taking the content from Colin and ‘pixel bashing’ it to work across the 4x Catalyst machines.
The show was run using timecode, meaning that the sound, lighting, video, lasers and automation would always remain in sync and be the same for each show.
Hopefully we’ll get the chance to work on the next big Land Rover launch.
