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Russian Economic Forum, Somerset House - April 2005
Sound By Design were recently contracted to provide sound for the Russian Economic Forum at Somerset House by Eventica. Having looked at the unseasonable weather forecast (snow in April!) we turned up with our two wagons worth of equipment prepared for the worst. Indeed the first challenge in this venue is getting the 7.5 Tonne truck into the courtyard without hitting any of the precious stonework!
The centrepiece of the event was a large marquee in the courtyard containing a reception area leading into a themed club with a stage for live bands. The reception was rigged with discreet Meyer Sound MPS-355 loudspeakers for piped background music and speeches. A full-blown system was installed into the "club" area comprising of four 650-P subs, six UPA-1P tops and a full EM Acoustics monitor rig. We also provided turntables and CD decks for the star turn Russian DJ! Once again a regular Sound By Design Polish-speaking freelancer was employed both as monitor engineer and chief translator. Another looked after the guest engineers at front of house with a Crest X-VCA desk.
As a special surprise the guests were treated to a 15-minute projection onto the side of The Courtauld Institute provided by ETC Projection. A powerful outdoor sound system was rigged for this element comprising of ground-stacked Meyer M2D curvilinear array cabinets complimented with 700-HP subs. Griff Hewis worked closely with ETC in the production of this, editing the soundtrack on Pro Tools to sync with the images. The soundtrack was transferred to a Mackie SDR hard disk, which outputted SMPTE timecode to sync with the projection software. Control position was situated some 200m from the speakers in a rarely seen part of Somerset House abandoned for some years. The 700-HP subs had to be tamed somewhat as to avoid damage to any nearby historic windows, and our reputation!
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