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2015 Eastern Virginia Medical School Commencement
RCI Systems had the pleasure of providing full production services for the 2015 Eastern Virginia Medical School commencement—an event which RCI has supported for seven years now! The graduation ceremony took place at Norfolk Scope Arena in Norfolk Virginia and highlighted a number of interesting challenges, or as we like to view them, opportunities to demonstrate our expert production designs.
Challenges:
This year Eastern Virginia Medical School had redesigned its set to include a large, truss hung series of banners defined by 40 foot fabric drape backdrops. RCI also created a baffled drape entrance at one end of the arena for processional and recessionale, which was highlighted by EVMS’s new LED battery powered lighting cubes. What’s more, with no lift or ladder access to the upstage truss, RCI Systems had to use some ingenuity in order to come up with an alternative to the painstaking process of accurately focusing the down-lighting fixtures. Finally, EVMS wanted spot lighting to illuminate sections of the seated graduates during different parts of the ceremony. RCI Systems production teams and technical directors put their heads together and came up with some fabulous solutions which provided equally impressive results.
Solutions:
First, RCI lighting designers utilized a mixture of both LED SIXPAR’s and conventional lighting fixtures to create a bright stage wash while utilizing a series of moving MAC 700 wash and profile fixtures along the upstage truss. This provided an ample amount of down lighting while also offering the lighting technicians the control they needed to accurately focus highlights from the lighting console once the truss was in the air. With an array of moving lights along the downstage truss, lighting technicians also had total control over the focus of spot lighting to highlight sections of the graduating class, all from the Hog lighting desk. While RCI Systems worked tirelessly on designing an effectively bright and workable lighting design, the production certainly did not end there. RCI’s audio team designed full audio coverage of the Norfolk Scope Arena by employing a powerful EAW 730 PA rig. The team flew four hangs of six boxes with a variety of fills all powered and processed by Lake Lab amp racks. Next, RCI System’s video team utilized three camera positions and switched between all three live camera feeds sending the iMag content to both the Arena Jumbotron and to a live Webcast. Moreover, RCI designed a pipe and drape baffle with black velour drapery as its solution to a hidden entry for the processional of distinguished attendees.
With the help of RCI System’s expert department leads and an experienced combination of technical direction and project management, RCI Systems demonstrated its ability to support full production events and tie together brilliant audio, video, lighting and décor for large arena style events such as the Eastern Virginia Medical School Commencement. We will certainly look forward to designing EVMS’ commencement in 2016!
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