In May our Encore team in Auckland partnered with real estate brand, Barfoot & Thompson, to deliver their annual awards night in recognizing high performing staff and offices. Held in the Ballroom at SKYCITY Convention Centre Auckland, we delivered a very grand, decadent awards setting for 520 guests. Providing an end-to-end solution for this long-term client, we designed a big Hollywood awards style evening – big custom stage set, with custom on-screen content, red carpet, lots of gold and warm tones. Encore provided a total production solution from initial concept through to execution and management on show night. Upon arrival guests were ushered down a glamorous red carpet posing in front of the 4m media wall to have their ‘paparazzi’ shot taken. Being an awards night, the hero of the event design was the bespoke stage set comprising of 2 x 15m wide screens, 8 hexagonal panels and a large 15m x 4.5m low res LED screen – the entire design spanning a total of 32m wide! A challenge in the production process was finding projector fabric large enough for the screens, leaving our team to import it from the UK as there is no seamless fabric tat large in New Zealand. Leading up to this impressive stage set, our team built a custom grand staircase in a hexagonal shape to complement the hexagonal screen panels and the gold wire hexagonal table centrepieces.
We collaborated closely with B&Ts marketing agency who was responsible for producing their on-screen content. It was important we met week in the lead up to the event to review the content and provide technical feedback to make sure it was feasible and provide creative insight as to what could be possible. Our production team brought this content to life on stage using our Watchout media server and some of the largest projectors in the country – 4 x 30K projectors – which included some projection mapping prowess to line up the single image across the entire set including the hexagonal panels. Lighting design comprised of static, amber-coloured pin spots lighting each onto each table, 8 profile lights rigged to the ceiling with 16 from the floor, casting beams of light around the room with gobo beams breaking them up. During each award a ballyhoo lighting effect was used giving it that Hollywood awards feel “similar to a lighting drumroll effect”.
We created a beautiful canopy effect on the ceiling using luxurious gold draping interspersed with warm fairy lights with black draping to dress the venue walls. Guest were treated to a mesmerising performance by a trio with the Grand Piano as we all as a special performance from popular New Zealand singer-songwriter Lizzie Marvelly. The choice of gold tones, warm lighting, a flashy dramatic stage set with big, orchestral music all worked beautifully together to create one memorable awards night.
The 1,600-person event called Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend is now in its 19th year and was held at Crown Palladium. It is presented by the Women for Challenge Committee and Bed Bath N’ Table. The 2019 theme, Let’s Fiesta, incorporated bright colours, a fun atmosphere and big personalities. The event saw the Encore team supporting an all-female event by incorporating colourful paper flowers made by mothers and their children living with cancer into beautiful centrepieces. It was a small touch that told a significant story.
Catrina Bennell, General Manager Victoria, Encore said the centrepieces are just one piece in a large event that shared the important journey of families who have a child with cancer. “We wanted to create an event where potential donors and sponsors are inspired to give money to support this important charity.
“When the event manager for Challenge, Jane Rainey asked us if we could include the flowers made by the children and their families, we thought this would be a fantastic way to connect the children with the event. It made a real connection between our guests and the reason they were there,” said Bennell.
The Tourism Accommodation Australia recently hosted 750 guests at The Star Sydney, for their annual Tourism Accommodation Awards (TAA) night. The much-anticipated evening was again assigned to Encore Event Technologies, who created a beautifully styled event. The awards provide a platform for measuring and promoting service excellence by hotels. The client requested a concept that complimented the design of the annual logo created for the event. This year was a swirling gold logo which our team translated into a glamorous look for the event through a staging and theming solution including stage design and multimedia. The team created a custom stage set comprising custom projection screens shaped like the Sydney city skyline. Beautiful animated artworks were projection mapped on to the screens throughout the night. Event Feed was used on the night to enable guests to post their photos to the big screen during the night and tag the event #TAAAwards2019 to integrate the shots onto the TAA’s social media.
For nearly a decade, Encore have had the pleasure of working with Tourism Accommodation Australia (VIC) to deliver their annual awards. As with every year, the brief is to deliver a totally new and immersive experience, and this year’s theme gave Encore the permission to deliver just that. Nearly 500 esteemed guests, nominees and representatives from Victoria’s finest accommodation hotels attended the awards night at Grand Hyatt Melbourne in late June. Driven by the night’s entertainment Encore were engaged to design an evening to emulate the experience of attending the theatre. Taking a fresh approach to a ‘theatre’ themed stage set, Encore chose to incorporate both the back and front of house of a theatre as a homage to those in the room. Looking not only at the glitz and glamour, but all the hard working people behind the scenes.
From the client,
“I want to extend a big thank you to Encore for all your help and dedication on our TAA (Vic) Awards.
Your flexibility with last minute changes, and an ever changing event brief, all the video content – I know it was a lot to ask, and you really made the whole process so easy and flawless come the event night.
Thank you. We look forward to next year!”
Encore produced the Hawthorn Football Club 2019 Season Launch which saw the AFL team receive their official guernsey for the season in front of VIPs, including Club President The Hon Jeff Kennett, coaches, fans and media.
This year the Club wanted to create a new event design to the previous year and the team rose to the challenge providing a creative solution. Encore’s render to reality services played a huge part in helping bring the vision to life which you can see the attention to detail in this album.
The team carefully planned the stage setup as it had to be the focal point of the room and be big enough to host all the players at once. The team created lifelike renders of the room design from various angles so that the client could precisely imagine their vision for the event. The stage set was created facing the corners, rather than along the straight wall of the room for a dynamic room look.
The team used a range of audio visual solutions at the MCG designing a tower formation of LEDs for a sharp and effective look. The set featured the Harlequin design 3D Scenic Panels which worked well to Hawks’ branding; the lighting colours were set to the gold Hawthorn colours – basking the room in the brand.
The Encore team worked together with the Hawthorn Digital Manager to develop content which showcased footage of the players filmed during pre-season. This was overlayed by the branding and colour schemes of the season. The result was a powerful presentation that was dynamic and struck an emotional chord generating excitement for the upcoming season.
With only a week to design, produce and deliver this event, the Encore team worked fast to deliver their vision for the event. The result was a sophisticated set-up, seamless delivery and the Hawthorn team were completely delighted seeing their Hawks’ brand come to life.
“ A massive thank you for all the work you did for our epic AV at Season Launch. There have been so many comments about how good it looked and what an impact it made! You are clearly very passionate about your work and more so in getting the best outcome for your clients, so we are very grateful!”
Every year the Crows host a fundraising event in support of the Adelaide Crows Children’s Foundation. The event is one of the Club’s largest events of the year. This year was a visual extravaganza with a croquet theme, a fun play-on-word on the Club’s name, the Adelaide Crows. As the club’s official audio visual partner, Encore was thrilled to be delivering the event at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre for another year for their 1000 valued guests.
Encore in Fiji were engaged by leading US health food company, The Wonderful Company, to deliver their annual sales conference for 200 high-performing team members in tropical Fiji. Held between 3 – 7 June 2019 at the InterContinental Fiji Golf & Spa Resort, as the in-house AV and event services partner, Encore collaborated with Rosie Hollidays who provided all thee styling, decor and concept for the event. The event program comprised a Welcome Dinner at Kama beachfront, followed by two full days of conference sessions, a White party dinner on Thursday before a final day of conference sessions before flying home.
The event vision was clear from the outset and the client’s prior production experience helped make the process run smoothly. The final concept was significantly larger than what was initially proposed as The Wonderful Company grew more excited about the event and more confident in Encore’s capabilities. The Welcome Dinner held on the foreshore of the resort was all about setting the tone for the event to come. There was lots of vibrant, colourful lighting to echo the tropical surroundings with guests even treated to a special ‘welcome drink’ in a kava ceremony – a traditional Fijian welcoming ritual.
The tropical vibes continued into the design of the main conference in the Ballroom; the stage was dressed with a cane matting, the bright palm-tree imagery on the large 20ft x 11ft rear projector screen, as well as the suspended hollow wooden hearts which were used as a branding device. Across all of the events, The Wonderful Company’s heart-shaped logo was incorporated in various ways from a gobo projected onto the roof at the Welcome Dinner, the suspended wooden hearts in the conference design and a special custom-made 5m flaming heart for the closing White Party.
The scope and production management involved with delivering this event on the 4th tee of the golf course presented many challenges for the Encore team to overcome. There was actually a pro golf tournament happening at the time, which meant Encore had to coordinate the bump-in to occur at a specific time and work around their schedule. An event of this scale meant we were coordinating 9 external suppliers, with a tight turnaround on a remote location, definitely presented many challenges. However the event went off without a hitch – even the ‘59 Chevelle car used for as a photo prop made it through Fijian customs just in time.
Lighting was key to the event. We started the night with a blue wash, cloaking the event and which made the all-white guests and décor stand out. Then as the night progressed we continued to changed the lighting colours and effects using our wirelessly controlled uplighting to suit the mood and energy as the event continued into the wee hours.
As the big finale guests were treated to a spectacular fireworks display. A wonderful ending to The Wonderful Company’s sales conference.
The Sunsuper Riverfire event at the Stamford Plaza Brisbane hosted over 1700 VIPs and the public, for the crown jewel of the annual Brisbane Festival. Encore delivered a spectacular display of lighting projected into the trees and on surrounding buildings which reflected off the Brisbane River.
Four separate outdoor events and three indoor events ran simultaneously. The first public food truck event was decorated with thousands of multicoloured festoon lights suspended four metres in the air branching out from a central post creating an impressive star shaped light installation.
The VIP event featured an oriental theme. A glamourous red carpet framed by red oriental lanterns greeted guests as they arrived. Artificial LED Cherry Blossom trees provided illumination, while lanterns and golden decorative bird cages were used to dress the marquees.
Lighting around the events provided decorative pops of colour, including colourful up lighting of trees and plants. The Encore team managed all audio to ensure areas along the River could hear the live event which was broadcast live on Triple M Brisbane.
Sponsor logos were projected 3m high onto buildings to acknowledge the support of Singapore Airlines, Virgin, Stamford Plaza and Encore.
What did the client say?
“We are so impressed with the work Encore did to seamlessly deliver events for our VIP guests and the public. It was the perfect way to celebrate Brisbane in all of its beauty.
The styling done by Encore was flawless with every detail considered and executed to perfection.
Thank you again to the Encore team, we couldn’t have delivered this event without your expertise,” Gerard Knight, General Manager, Stamford Plaza Brisbane.
Encore were engaged by Pullman Reef Hotel Casino to deliver their annual Accor Famil in Cairns for 2019. The brief was to ensure this event topped last year’s success which heavily featured projector mapping. It was also deemed important to feature the Accor brand and tie this with elements that are unique to Cairns.
The immersive theming transported guests to the heart of a rainforest. Encore created an enclosed space complete with suspended foliage from truss arches and hanging tungsten bulbs. The table was custom designed and had a water feature in the centre. Encore provided the lighting to create the ambience of a candlelit dinner in the middle of the rainforest.
The event backdrop had a printed image of a Far North Queensland rainforest. The guests were amazed by the transformation of the standard blank event space. The client supplied a live snake and frogmouth owl to enhance the theming produced by Encore; it took them all a few moments to realise the live animals would be joining them for dinner.
This event was highly successful due to the team’s dedication to theming across all components produced for this event. Encore were able to implement creative event solutions to ensure the guests will be talking about it for years to come. Proving again that Encore are more than just a tech company, they are a creative company.
And the verdict…
“Thank you for the amazing setup. I have no doubt that you will be the first port of call for all AV in TNQ,” Mabel Connor.
“You guys have outdone yourselves. I feel very proud,” Briohny Evans, Business Development Executive, Pullman Reef Hotel Casino.
Guests were dazzled by of one of the largest table projection experiences in Australia, when Encore designed and delivered a never-before-seen showcase event on behalf of Crown Towers for Virtuoso, a luxury tourism company. Themed ‘Welcome to the Emerald City’, a play on Sydney’s nick name, every table had stunning, bespoke projections alternating throughout the evening. This was one of the largest table projection projects in Australia ever completed, with a total of 55 individual table projections and an absolute stand-out of the event that had the guests enthralled.