CT, BRIT ROW, STAR EVENTS, BLACKOUT AND REDBURN TRANSFER AMONG TOP SUPPLIERS FOR BRITISH OLYMPIC PARADE

The team from Creative Technology had to set its own sprint record when the British Olympic heroes paraded through central London on October 16 in celebration of their achievements in Athens, as well as highlighting London's bid for the 2012 Games. Despite severe limitations imposed by traffic control, infrastructure and minimal production times, CT's four-man squad still managed to get three screens up for the televised event in Trafalgar Square, and get them out again, in just 12 hours.

On either side of the stage, set up in front of the National Gallery, were CT's 25mm LED modular screens. Flown from support structures provided by Star Events, each screen measured 8.2m x 5m high, showing in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Beside Nelson's Column and the sound mix tower, facing back towards to the stage, was a CT Mini Mobile on a scissor lift, 3.9m and 2.5m high, used as a 'foldback screen', enabling the crowd of athletes and dignitaries on the stage to see what was going on. All feeds for the screens were taken from the BBC, which was televising the event live.

The parade was production managed by Robbie Williams Productions (RWP) for the British Olympic Association. RWP also hired Blackout to supply all the branding materials and soft goods for the parade. For each of the five giant branded floats, Blackout produced five giant perforated vinyl mesh banners, each measuring 14 x 2.4 metres to fit each flat bed trailer deck.

Blackout also themed both sides of the arch structure at the procession's start with vinyl banners, as well as four stunning trevira 30 x 4.5 metre banners, specially fabricated with handles all around the edges and sewn with slits designed to waft in the wind. The handles ensured that 20 children in the procession could easily and safely carry each banner."

Redburn Transfer was invited to provide five tractors and 13.6 metre flat bed trailers for the procession. The trailers were converted to 'Olympic floats' at Redburn's Enfield depot and dressed with Olympic and London 2012 bid banners, to carry the medal-winning Olympians through the centre of London.

Britannia Row fielded two systems - a small Turbosound TQ440 system and Shure radio speech mics in Piccadilly, rigged off the gantry 'doorway' that the parade started from, and a 24-cabinet EV X-line compact system with two DiGiCo D5 consoles to cover speeches, program material and performers.

Robbie Williams worked alongside Liz Holden and Albert Lawrence on the event, and other suppliers hired by RWP included Star Events (staging), Unusual (site planning and rigging) and Confetti Magic.

Chris Redburn spoke for all the supply companies when he said: "It was a really prestigious and high profile event for us and one we were very proud to be involved with."