The Diamond Jubilee of the annual Miss South Africa pageant, held for the first time at Sun International’s Time Square Sun Arena in Pretoria, sparkled like never before.
Produced by [sic] Entertainment and directed by Gavin Wratten for live broadcast on M-NET (DSTv channel 101) and Mzansi Magic (DSTv channel 161), the Miss SA pageant offered the live audience, judges and contestants – not to mention the millions of South Africans who watched the live broadcast – a spectacular show. The title of Miss South Africa, together with the coveted title of Miss Universe South Africa, was bestowed upon Tamaryn Green, with the title of Miss World South Africa going to Thulisa Keyi.
A Beautiful Team
Dream Sets, one of the country’s leaders in set design and production for the live events industry, designed and delivered a breath-taking stage for the 60th Miss SA pageant, featuring the largest number of LED screens ever to be used on a Miss SA production.
Dream Sets has a proud history going back to 2008 as the set builders for this prestigious annual event. The relationship has grown over the years and in 2015 Dream Sets was appointed the official set and technical supplier to Miss South Africa. Dream Sets relied on the support of MGG, the venue’s in-house service technical provider for professional technical support. The impressive lighting and set design were created in close collaboration with Gavin Wratten by Joshua Cutts and Andre Siebrits from Visual Frontier.
“I have been lighting the Miss South Africa pageant for four consecutive years, and while it is always a beautiful event, we wanted to bring something special to the Diamond Jubilee,” Cutts told ETECH in a recent interview. “[sic] Entertainment have taken Miss SA to the next level. The technical team on this production have become a family over the years, and I am immensely proud of the Dream Sets crew,” said Sean Hoey of Dream Sets. The technical director for Miss South Africa 2018, Eben Peltz of Dream Sets added: “We appreciate the professionalism and absolute dedication of everyone involved. We loved working at the Sun Arena, and once again the team delivered.”
A Beautiful LED Wall
LED screens took centre stage at this year’s iteration of the Miss South Africa pageant, with one of the largest LED walls that the MGG team has ever built providing a visually beautiful and highly interactive set. The LED display consisted of more than one thousand panels, controlled by two Hippotizer Boreal Media Servers.
Instead of the more conventional continuous screen, Cutts designed ‘screen strips’, which were positioned at different angles on the stage, while graphic content ran seamlessly across all the LED panels, simultaneously. Johan Botha and Tim Parker worked in unison setting up the Hippotizers and LED screens, of which at least seven hundred were Absen pieces consisting of V4 (4.8mm outdoor) and DV2 (2.9mm Indoor) interlocking panels.
“We used two 4K outputs with one Boreal running the 4.8mm LEDs, and the other Boreal controlling both the 2.9mm and centre LED screen,” said Botha. “Thanks to the Hippotizer it was so much easier to map the content. We did have to cut up all the content and remap it, but it was easy. When we switched the LED screens on for the first time, the accuracy of the Hippotizer was phenomenal.”
Having used Hippotizer’s Video Mapper, the system was connected to MA Net, so that lighting designers Cutts and Siebrits could run the AV on the grandMA2 lighting consoles. “It worked like a dream,” said Botha. “What I love about the Hippotizer is that while it takes time to set up, in the end, it does not matter how complex or versatile a show may be – everything is simplified. We could run the system without a worry.” Botha stated that the two machines worked together perfectly, and the frame accuracy was fantastic. “We were happy with the Hippotizers, which kept up with all the content,” commented Siebrits. “When you chose a look, it was there immediately.”
Tamaryn Green is crowned Miss SA 2018
A BEAUTIFUL LIGHT SHOW
In recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Miss South Africa pageant, show director, Gavin Wratten of [sic] Entertainment based the design of the show on a theme that captured the beauty and lasting elegance of diamonds.
“This year was the diamond jubilee, so we tried to use geometrical shapes that captured the angular nature of the diamond,”
Cutts explains.
The main stage was 28 metres wide by 8 meters deep, with a 14-metre ramp extending to the front and a 9×6 metre presentation stage at the end of that. Special effects included a kabuki drop to reveal the 12 finalists. “Every year, we try to bring something new to the show. This year we used a kabuki drop to reveal the contestants as the opening scene, which proved to be a great moment in the show,” Cutts points out.
The Sun Arena provided a much more expansive venue for the Miss South Africa pageant, and therefore Cutts specified a much larger lighting rig then was used in previous years. The Sun Arena has an extensive in-house lighting rig, which is largely made up of Robe fixtures. Cutts augmented this with Dream Set’s inventory to produce a lightshow that captured the timeless elegance of diamonds with understated colour and tone, but still provided the lighting necessary for a live broadcast. “Being in the Sun Arena for the first time, the larger venue required a bigger lighting rig then I have had in previous years to cover and fill the space from a lighting point of view. I think – all in all – it felt like a bigger production in comparison to years past,”
Cutts explained.
Cutts used Robe BMFL Blades for all of the key lighting across the main and thrust stages, with the fixtures rigged on FOH trusses for maximum reach. Twelve BMFL Spots were used for producing breakup and other effects down the ramp from the stage, to the presenter stage at the end of the thrust. Four V-shaped trusses were installed above the stage for the overhead lighting positions, and 18 BMFL WashBeams were rigged on these and used for dramatic beam work and texturing the stage and set. The Robe MegaPointe, however, proved the star of the lighting show, with 24 fixtures positioned for maximum impact on a truss running across the back of the stage just above the LED columns.
“The MegaPointes are awesome,” proclaims Cutts. “The beams are so powerful that they sliced straight through the ambient light coming off the LED screens, and I was able to create fantastic in-air effects utilising the gobo wheels and prisms,” he explains.
One of the highlights of the set design for Miss South Africa 2018, was the six water fountains that shimmered around the contestants during the show. “We wanted to use water on the stage again this year. In previous years, we used water curtains with projection – so this year I suggested using water fountains to Gavin,” explains Cutts. To achieve this, the team installed two 900mm deep pools into the stage floor, which held 36 tonnes of water. The fountains were achieved using water pumps that were controlled from the grandMA lighting console that was used to programme the show. Cutts decided to light the fountains using beams from above, together with subtle tones of aquamarine on the LED panels behind the fountains. “The secret to the lighting design for Miss South Africa was achieving the correct balance between the contestants walking on the runway and the water features,” Cutts concludes. The result was a dazzling production that highlighted the beauty of South African women and the incredible talent that brought the show to life from behind the scenes.
