For the 11th year, creative technical event production expert Hawthorn has supported BBC Worldwide to showcase its premium programmes to international television buyers. Taking place on 19-22 February, the event saw over 700 television buyers from across the globe descend on ACC Liverpool and Echo Arena to view unmissable British content and hear from some of the world’s top creative talent.

Hawthorn was chosen to work with the in-house production team and their group of trusted suppliers to deliver the uniquely stunning evening events for the world’s biggest television sales market hosted by a single distributor.

Showcasing the very best of BBC talent and creativity, the exclusive evening events deliver world class, never seen before entertainment to an audience of the world’s top TV executives and producers. Led by the BBC Worldwide team, Hawthorn’s Group Creative Director Peter Harding helped to create a stunning production design for the events, delivering a unique and immersive audience experience.

Celebrating all that is bold, British and creative, Monday evening saw shows such as Doctor Who, Sherlock, Call the Midwife andPlanet Earth II brought to life with awe-inspiring entertainment. Taking reference from the new BBC Worldwide logo, the evening was themed around the idea of ‘The Spark’, representing the development of an idea and the ignition of a thought. To bring this to life, Hawthorn worked with creative experience experts Black Skull Creative to produce an impactful, theatrical design for the evening, different to anything previously seen at Showcase.

The team used six 2m, 2.5m and 3m Pufferspheres to recreate the new BBC Worldwide logo above the stage and audience. Kinesys was used to move the spherical projection surfaces, that feature Barco 30k projectors mounted on top, allowing Hawthorn to change the height of the impressive physical sculpture throughout the choreographed show.

Other key technical features used for the annual spectacular included:

• Four of Hawthorn’s new d3 4x4pro media servers using VFC cards to play out all content to timecode.
• A 30m wide x 9m high projection screen, utilising six, triple stacked Christie Boxster 4K30 projectors in a two-projector blend. This delivered a whopping 180,000 lumens and 15,552,000 pixels.
• A lighting design by renowned Lighting Designer Russell Grubiak including twenty-eight Clay Paky K10 & K20, thirty-six Alpha Spot QWO 800, twenty Sharpy, thirty-six Mythos and thirty Viper Performance
• A 10m diameter circle drum of LED created using ESD dazzle 3.9mm LED panels.
• The latest d&b audio system, using a total of 88 boxes, controlled via a Dante network creating a 7.1 surround sound system in the arena. Hawthorn used the new in-house hybrid multicores to transmit digital, analogue and networking data between desks and to amplifiers.

In contrast to the energy and glitz of the previous night, Tuesday evening saw a melding of experience and elegant fine dining. Welcoming 700 dinner guests and launching the much -anticipated upcoming series Blue Planet II, the evening gave clients the opportunity to relax and network in a show stopping environment.

With just fourteen hours to transform the arena floor into a spectacular underwater world, Hawthorn used ten Christie Boxster 4K30 projectors to display cleverly choreographed Blue Planet II themed projections onto five sides of a 19.5m wide hexagonal dining space. A 180-piece choir completed the experience, accompanying a Hans Zimmer composition whilst footage from the new series played out on the 100m wide x 6.5m high projection surface, ensuring guests were truly immersed in the stunning content.

Peter Harding, Group Creative Director at Hawthorn, said: “BBC Worldwide Showcase is an event that’s an absolute privilege to work on; it’s endlessly exciting and challenges us to pull out all the stops. Each night features a completely different event environment and we only have a very short time to turn it around. But that’s what makes it so much fun to work on and there is always such a great vision behind the events. We have a great long-term relationship with the amazing events team at BBC Worldwide and this collaboration allows us to deliver off-the-scale, exceptional experiences for guests, year after year.”

Jo Morris, Senior Events Producer for BBC Worldwide, said: “The team at Hawthorn delivered a truly brilliant production for the Showcase evening events once again this year. We have a long-standing relationship with Hawthorn but this year was extraordinary for the way in which the ambition for both nights was realised, thanks to our incredible suppliers. We always assume that everything is possible with them as partners and Showcase 2017 was no exception.”