Brighton Festival Chorus

Brighton Festival Chorus is ‘one of the country’s leading symphony choruses..’ (The Times) and in our hometown of Brighton considered ‘one of the jewels in the city’s musical crown’ (The Argus).

BFC has performed with all the major British orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra. BFC also has a long-standing relationship with the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra.

BFC has made 10 appearances at the BBC Proms and been nominated for two Grammy awards.

BFC is independent and develops its own creative programme which includes off-book, semi-staged, and dawn chorus events alongside live film performances & TV commercials. We have supported artists as diverse as Armstrong and Miller, Pete Townshend, Katherine Jenkins, Dame Edna Everage, Chris de Burgh and Alfie Boe.

Our vision is to reimagine the symphony chorus of tomorrow, through extending the breadth of our work and embracing new possibilities, through the passion and commitment of our members, the brilliance of the Brighton Festival Youth Choir and our outreach workshops and school events.

All Saints Church

The church has no fixed pews, so seating can be arranged to suit standing canapé receptions, balls, gala dinners, conferences, product launches, exhibitions and much more.

The church seats up to 250 people in its usual configuration or up to 500 people with additional chairs.

So whether you are looking to organise a fashion show, product launch, award ceremony, theatre production, conference, lecture, a sophisticated dinner, or anything else, this is one of the most accomodating venues in the area and one we have thoroughly enjoyed working with.

The Brief

BFC approached Indigo Splash seeking technical advice and provision for video equipment needed to support their concert at All Saints Church, Hove.

The original brief was to provide video relay onto a large screen of an artist’s canvas as they paint a visual interpretation of the music during the choir’s performance. The artist was to be positioned out of sight from the audience as to not distract the audience members from the performance of the choir.

The producers of the BFC were wanting to experiment with their concerts to increase engagement and intrigue into the realms of classical music by incorporating a visual element into the performances.

Having worked previously with artist Curtis Tappenden on a smaller but similar project, the team were eager to take things to the next level by seeking our professional advice and expertise.

Key Deliverables

Project Management

Technical Consultancy

Technical specification

Video equipment & services

Rigging & Logistics

Production Management

The Challenges

To be a visually impactful experience without distracting the attendees from also enjoying the performance of the choir and to illuminate the canvas of the artist without illuminating the artist themselves, and as a result, bringing them into the foreground of the performance too heavily.

Capturing the artists canvas from a vertical position without obstruction from the artist themselves, and to relay back to the artist a video feed from the audience’s perspective.

Our Solution

Initially, we were asked to provide two 85” LED displays on stands at the front of the audience, but due to the size of the venue and how many attendees were expected, this would only have been comfortably viewable for the front section of the audience.

Originally, the team had discussed amongst themselves having a large projection screen behind the choir but were conscious that this may distract the audience too much from the choir performance.

By taking our client’s brief into account and drawing on our extensive experience with audio visual technology, we were able to provide a solution.

We understood that the original idea was for the artists visuals to compliment the choir, not the other way round. There was also a budgetary restriction which meant using large scale projection, while being an impressive medium, was not within the scope of the client’s budget.

Keeping in mind the concerns of the visuals being too distracting, our project managers provided a less visually distracting solution with the use of smaller 55” screens positioned between the columns down the sides of the audiences – this would allow the visuals to remain easily visible while not being the main focus of attention for the audience members who were most interested in seeing the performance of the choir.

The initial brief noted that the artist would be off to the side from the performance and out of sight, however during the technical sight survey, the producers felt they wanted to make use of the space in the Church and put the Artist up high in the Pulpit behind the front rows of the choir.

This new decision meant we would need to come up with a discreet, yet powerful enough, lighting set up within the limited space of the pulpit while still giving the artist the freedom to set up his workspace as he sought fit.

At Indigo Splash, we regularly need to think outside the box when it comes to accommodating last minute changes and providing custom lighting for events, so we were able to quickly come up with a solution which achieved our client’s objectives.

First, we supplied the artist with an adjustable height/tilt lectern which allowed us to angle the canvas slightly to position the camera just off enough not to be in their way of movement without skewing the image of the canvas.

Then we supplied multiple soft LED light sources to illuminate the canvas from within the Pulpit area – using the soft lighting allowed us to get the lights in proximity of the canvas without being overbearing for both the artist and audience.

Conscious of the colours and definition of the artist’s work we used a Panasonic AG-CX350 4K camera to capture the canvas which was paired with our Sony Bravia 40L 55” displays so deliver stunningly vibrant colours and extremely sharp clarity to the image.

We used a 4x3m black aluminium bar frame set (goal post) positioned over the pulpit which we attached the camera to using a Manfrotto Magic Arm bracket – this allowed us to get the head room we needed above the artist and use the amgic arm for micro adjustments to precisely capture the canvas with minimal need for overspill when cropping the image to size.

To relay a separate video feed back to the artist for their reference, we used a Blackmagic Design URSA camera with a 18x zoom lens to capture the entirety of the choir while also having the freedom to capture individual performers in great detail for the artist to see.

We also supplied a 43” display on a 7ft stand opposite the Pulpit for the artists reference fed directly from the Blackmagic URSA camera.