14/01/2008
10:29
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newsfeature ••••••
News (22-23) - Mediolanum.qxd
High Tech Finance with Mediolanum HD video and cutting edge
Italy - Leading Italian finance group
audio and lighting made for
of activity with a huge multimedia convention
a spectacular bankers’ convention in the Italain town of Pesaro.
Words & pictures
www.lsionline.co.uk
by Mike Clark
22 Lighting&Sound - January 2008
Mediolanum recently celebrated its 25th year in the town of Pesaro. The event, which had as its leitmotif the “Promised Land” (Italian emigrants’ idea of the United States in the 30s), was staged at the Adriatic sports arena. The grounds were transformed into a port, complete with a “ship” moored at the dock, shops, restaurants and bars, and the arena itself hosted an audience of 10,000 family bankers and staff, which took part in the celebrations at an in-the-round event produced by Mediolanum Communicazione Alboran, with ‘Madison Square Garden’s boxing ring’ as its stage and an impressive array of leading-edge AV technology. Alboran event manager Sara Gorla (one of three ladies in key roles on this production) coordinated the contractors supplying audio, video and lighting technology - respectively AB Systems, Cinemascope and Audiolux. The huge Litec truss structure flown above the ring formed two blocks of video screens round the venue’s basketball scoreboard: the uppermost with four sides, and below it an octagonal set-up. Visuals played a predominant role and there were also four 65” Panasonic plasma monitors and nine 43” Pioneer units round the edge of the stage and 55 LCD disseminated among the seats. Each of the four 45ft x 21ft top screens was used with a pair of Barco FLM HD18 18k projectors, whereas a Barco SLM R12 15,000 lumen unit projected on each of the lower eight. Cinemascope’s Simone Settembrini explains: “We
fielded an HD OB truck which fed live coverage to the screen control position, alongside the FOH desk in the arena, and recorded the event for a DVD, with nine Thomson LDK 6000 HD cameras. Playout was via three Folsom Encore 3ME video processors, which, as well as the truck’s signals, received PowerPoint graphics, animated sequences from two Dataton Watchout systems, and recorded footage from two GVG Turbo DDR units.” The truck feed was native HD and, using the Folsom units, the team up-converted all the other signals and sent an all-HD feed to the Barcos, exploiting their DLP displays. The main Adamson audio rig (supplied by AB System and designed by Didier DalFitto of DV2, Adamson’s European support company) was in the capable hands of PA man Luca Nobilini, supported by Alberto Francesconi of Adamson’s Italian distributor, Reference Laboratory, and David Nulli, representing DalFitto. It was decided to hang the majority of the speakers above the screens for aesthetics reasons, so Nulli realigned all the hangs as far as time and phase were concerned, using XTA’s Audiocore software driving the DSP, WinMLS audio and acoustics measurement software and Adamson’s Y-Axis Shooter. The impressive system featured six arrays: four with 16 SpekTrix each and the other two with 12 Y10s. Eight flown front-fill hangs each had two SpekTrix Wave and a SpekTrix system. Eight more SpekTrix were used as “lip”-fills round the stage and the bottom end was covered with clusters of three T21 subwoofers, plus two more on the floor under the ring. Power and processing was handled by 44 Lab.gruppen fP 3400 and 10 fP6400 (for the subs),