By all accounts, one of the more satisfying corporate theatre gigs is the charity event; it’s not just a party you’re working, it’s for the better good, and that seems to bring out the best in creative forces.

On March 5th, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation held their charity event, titled, 'An Evening of Enchantment'. The JDRF Charity Event included a Live Auction, scrumptious dinner with 'Flam Chen' performing as well as 1980's new wavers Berlin' performing, all within the Grand Ballroom at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. With over a thousand guests in the house, the pressure was on to produce a stellar production that would match the significance of the charity.

The talent pool for the event was spearheaded by Event Producer Carey Dicksion. Production company was 5.0 Productions of Scottsdale, AZ. Relying on local gear and designers, Carey utilized equipment provider David Stern and Precise Corporate Staging.

The lighting design was created by Darin DeVall and Sandra Bond of No Jip Lighting. With production labor provided by World Class Production Services, Dicksion and 5.0 were prepped to pull off the multi-faced evening of frenetic auction, subdued dinner, and musical performance.

Set in the wide panorama of the Grand Ballroom, a punchy lighting system and prerequisite IMAG package were the order of the day. Highlights of the illumination scheme included lighting control from a High End Systems Hog PC system complete with a programming wing, playback wing and two DMX widgets thrown in for good measure.

Fixture choice was squarely in the Martin Professional camp, and with only 30 movers in the design, the expansive space was still treated with broad strokes of dichroic color. Six Martin MAC 2000 Performance fixtures were augmented with twelve MAC 2K Wash and twelve MAC 2K Profiles, along with 36K in conventionals.

Of course, audio needed to be similarly flexible, and the creative team chose some proven performers to accomplish this task. At FOH, a Midas Verona 56 input house console handled mixing, while the ever popular NEXO Geos Line Array was employed; the hang used six 805 and one 830 boxes per side, plus two CD 18 Sub woofers per side. Monitor world held a venerable Midas XL-3 monitor console; Martin Audio LE700A monitors and a Klark EQ rounded out the reinforcement.

Video equipment on ‘An Evening of Enchantment’ included a Grass Valley CV110 switcher, Christie S+12k projectors, and three Sony D50 cameras with triax backs.

Lighting Crew
• Anton DeVall
• Sandra Bond
• John Spoonamore
• Jeff Scott
• Tony Ruggieri

Sound Crew
• Ken Gordon
• Devin Kelley
• Chris Cowdin
• Carlos Bornacelli

Video Crew
• Paul Barilla
• Chris Manwaring
• Annie Evans
• Paul Hornby
• Jon Chambers
• Eric Bergeson

TP US spoke with Sandra Bond and Anton DeVall, partners in No Jip Lighting, about the specific lighting requirements the multi-faceted event dictated. “This was our first year to work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for their charity event,” Sandra explains. “It was definitely a black tie affair, with around 1000 in the audience. It was held in early March at the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale; it’s a newer hotel ballroom built within the last few years.

“We were hired by Carey Dicksion and 5.0 Productions for the event,” she continues. “Carey served as Technical Director, and did a fantastic job pulling these elements together into a cohesive technical and artistic statement. It was a very cool gig - it actually had three distinct aspects, as opposed to a rock n’ roll gig, for example.

“The first portion of the evening was performance art from a flame-throwing dancing couple named Flam Chen. After the opening act, it moved into the charitable portion of the event and a large banquet dinner. This was followed by the actual auction, where a lot of high end companies donated many prizes to auction off. There were all kinds of vacation packages, antique cars, jewelry, etc. with the premise being to raise as much money as possible for juvenile diabetes. Following that, Berlin closed the evening as the entertainment portion. So technically, there was the performance art, the corporate banquet / auction, and then the rock n roll ending. So obviously, the same lighting rig had to do three different concepts for the same event.”

Lightheartedly, TP US asked how that was achieved. Sandra: “Professionalism, experience, creativity, and the fine lighting design of Mr. Anton DeVall.”

“We used the Hog PC with the DMX widgets, the programming wing, and the playback wing,” she continues. “We had MAC 2K Profiles, MAC 2K washes, and MAC 2K Performance, so I was more than happy with that. We also used some Thomas 6-bar lamps and bunch of ETC Source Four lekos for the stage lighting and ‘talking head’ performances.”

The lighting and scenic had a ‘fire and ice’ theme so the team ordered some custom gobos from Apollo Design for their MAC Profiles. “We had the fire and water with the Profile’s animation wheels - the two different gobos helped give the effect of the fire and ice.”

“We used a lot of the fire effects during Flam Chen, and then during the Berlin portion we used both gobos just to kind of bring it all together. There were a lot of moving lights used in both the performance art and the entertainment portion, and a lot of gobos for the different set looks. And on both sides of the stage there were IMAG screens; we had a lot of velour pipe and drape between the screens and behind the stage that we projected the gobos and animation onto.”

Video was used for live I-mag to bring close ups of the performing artists as well as the auction. Also on the screens during the auction was a Powerpoint® presentation of the actual items that were up for bid. “They also used live cameras,” Bond explains. “We had three different Sony cameras - two hand-helds and one stationary camera - used during all three portions, so they took the different angles of the camera shots and used those wide on the IMAG. Because it was a very wide room, and the complete ballroom was being utilized, it helped to bring close-ups to people in different areas of the room.”

Conventionals handled illumination of the onstage performers and auctioneers, while Berlin was augmented with beefy Lycian 1267 long throw followspots.
TP US asked the designers what led them to their equipment choices. Sandra Bond explained, “Well, to be honest, we own the Hog PC and we prefer the Hog operating system for all of our lighting control. We find that we are Hog console people. It’s more versatile – you can do a lot of different things with the Hog and it’s a reliable platform. And Hog II is the operating system that’s been around for quite some time so we’re experienced with it; it’s very reliable and it’s quite versatile to set up for any different type of performance. And we really like the Martin Professional lights.”

Anton adds, “We use the three different flavors of MAC 2K. One is a Profile spot unit that has three separate gobo wheels, then you have the Performance unit which has gobo wheels and shutters, and then obviously the Wash units are good for your color washes. Basically, they’re very reliable, they have nice selections between the different types for gobos and the shutters, and they’re good wash units. We like their zoom – we like everything about them, really. And the colors are nice – we like their true red, especially when we were doing the fire theme. The true red’s really nice. They just make really good products.”

In pulling off the multiple needs in the room, there were several staging considerations to wrangle through. “They had a really nice custom-designed backdrop of a volcano hung off of the upstage truss,” Sandra points out. Anton calls the trussing structure your ‘typical 12 x12 Tomcat truss, 40 ft. upstage and 90 ft. downstage’. The rig was flown on ten points.

In any show, touring or corporate or theatrical, the team effort of suppliers, creative and technical personnel quietly works behind the scenes to produce a memorable event. It certainly doesn’t happen inside a vacuum. No Jip provided the entire lighting crew, set strike crew and spot ops.

“We had great support and technical direction,” Sandra says. “We did the design, show execution, and direction - but we got all our lighting, sound, and video from Precise Corporate Staging, based in Tempe, AZ. They were key in making ‘A Night Of Enchantment’ a success. We had the right gear and the right people, and I think it showed. Each part of the event was treated as its own mini-show, and we tried to design with that in mind. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun splitting our brains into three hemispheres!”

TP US

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