King's affair 2007
After a string of successful events for other Oxford and Cambridge summer balls and other events, SXS were approached King's College to assist with the "King's Affair" Summer Ball.
The Brief
The event brief was an exciting one. The event was not like the other, sophisticated and even ostentatious balls held within the Oxbridge community.
The Affair was based around primarily live and pre-recorded music. In this line big name acts were booked and strong emphasis was placed on quality of production for the performance areas - in particular the sound.
There were several areas that needed servicing by the SXS team.
Architectural Illumination
King's College is one of the most photographed buildings in England. The buttressed gothic chapel and other architectural highlights are impressive.
The committee wanted to make a feature of these buildings. The chapel was to look fiery. This was achieved by using Martin Mania series fire projectors.
These are a small unit but were right for the job as the spread of projection was about 100'. The other building was illuminated by four Studio Duo City Colours. These are high powered colour changing floods.
In addition to these conventional architectural features, a search light effect was to be created. For this purpose a Martin Mac2000 moving head profile was put in two of the windows. These lights are phenomenally bright and the kit used for projecting images onto large buildings.
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Live Music Room
The Chetwynd room was used for this area. It is a tight space and an odd shape. As such the first challenge was the stage build. SXS crew member, Lawrence Everett, along with Simon Dillon, built a custom stage. Based around standard steel deck, the stage needed the addition of cornered wood section to utilise the space appropriately
The sound system was a staggering 10 000 watts of Thunder Ridge powered by Camco Vortex amps and BSS processing. A full FOH mixing position was provided (32 channels, 12 comps, effects and graphics), along with a full monitor system (seven wedges, 3k drum fill, six way of BSS graphics and 8 gates)
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Drum and Bass Room
The Keynes was converted into a serious Drum and Bass club, but had some issues with sound. This space backed onto the main street of cambridge.
The only divide was thin glass windows. Given that another 10 000 watt sound system was used in this space the sound pressure levels were high.
Using a new sound deadening technique, SXS utilised softscene polework to create a double-layer of thick black wool serge drapes.
Although it is not possible to completely eradicate sub bass frequencies (below 50 hZ), this went a long way to prevent general sound spillage. This double layer created the best temporary sound proofing any of the team had seen.
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Production Manager: Johnny Palmer
Account Manager: Cathy Shay
Chetwynd Room FOH Sound: Alex Thompson
Chetwynd Room Monitor Sound: Rob Stevenson
Chief Lighting Designer: Nick Thomas
Site Power and Floating Sound Engineer: Lee Stevens
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