A powerful new production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman by English National Opera (ENO) has opened in London with projection design by Nina Dunn of creative agency Knifedge.

Running at The Coliseum until 23 May 2012, ENO’s new production of Wagner’s early opera is directed by Jonathan Kent and designed by Paul Brown.

Knifedge’s video projections play an important narrative role throughout the production, revealing the tale of the The Dutchman to be a recurring figment of the main character’s imagination.

In a dramatic overture, the audience sees a child in bed at the heart of a dark and wild storm, surrounded by the crashing waves of the storybook she clutches.  This sets up the director’s concept of the progression from a child’s reality through a woman’s fantasy to a final obsession.

In creating her projections, Dunn worked closely with lighting designer Mark Henderson to achieve the right balance of intensity, colour and mood.

From a technical perspective, the kit consisted of 6 Panasonic projectors, 12 on-stage video monitors, 3 Catalyst Media servers and a Hog lighting desk.

Nina Dunn, Video & Projection Designer at Knifedge, comments:

“One of the challenges I faced was keeping pace with the Orchestra.  With the complicated content sequences, it’s all about hitting certain cue points so that music and imagery are symbiotic.  But such was the energy that Conductor Ed Gardner invested into the music for this production, I had to rework several of my original sequences to keep pace.”

Knifedge is one of the UK’s leading projection design companies, serving corporate, broadcast, sports, music and charity markets as well as the arts.  Other recent theatrical productions have included The Phantom of the Opera Tour, Pippin, AIDA, Backbeat, Emperor & Galilean and Cleopatra.

Highlight PR is offering a paid student placement for a PR Administrator for up to 12 months, starting ASAP.  We are looking for a current PR or media studies student with great organisational and communication skills, plus bags of initiative and personality.

You’ll be willing and able to take on a wide range of administrative tasks, supporting experienced consultants across a mix of our consumer and B2B accounts.

Typical PR projects will include researching and tracking media opportunities, setting up social media competitions, managing product and photo requests, uploading content onto blogs and websites, and producing regular evaluation reports.    You’ll also be expected to help out with the general day-to-day office admin duties of a small business.

Good computer skills are essential, as is speed and attention to detail.  An understanding of how to use Twitter and Facebook effectively is highly desirable.  An eye for photography and design would be a bonus.

In return, you will get the chance to learn a good range of basic account exec skills from a small team of highly experienced consultants, working in the beautiful city of Bath.

If you are interesting in applying for this placement, email your CV to Alison Vellacott with a cover note explaining why you want to work in PR.

Deadline for applications: 21st May 2012

Live event and content creation agency Line Up has recently completed a three-day experiential event for global car distributor and retailer Inchcape, designed to immerse Senior Managers in the company’s rich pioneering heritage, creatively communicate its future plans and gain commitment to its growth agenda.

Branded “Incredible Inchcape”, the event was held at the Fairmont Hotel in St Andrews, Scotlandon the 17^th-19^th of April – close to the iconic Inchcape lighthouse, from which the company takes its name.

The creative theme for the event was all based around the making of a movie – using content shot by Line Up’s in-house producers and live location experiences to immerse delegates in Inchcape’s story and future growth vision.

To create intrigue, just under 180 Senior Managers were sent personalised video invitations from Inchcape’s Group Chief Executive on branded USB cards, inviting them to be part of “something incredible” without disclosing details of the event content.

Arriving at the venue, the filmic theme of the event continued with delegates given an “Access Pass” and taken to a “Green Room” dressed as if a film was about to be shot. Guests were then welcomed into a “Studio” space, where a 180 degree projection screen helped create an immersive and adaptive environment that became the central hub of the event.

After a welcoming session delegates were given branded clothing for an evening of activities themed around the Inchcape “pioneering spirit”.  Returning to the Studio, guests found the room transformed into the inside of a 19^th century ship, with props such as barrels, oil lamps and rope placed around the room.  The 180 degree screen showed the view from inside a ship as it pitched on a restless sea.  Sound effects were used to heighten the experience.  When the ship reached land, delegates were ushered “onto land” making their way outside to a camp area of seven yurts.

The evening meal in small groups in the yurts was designed to encourage delegates to share their inspirational experiences of being part of the Inchcape family and to hear the personal stories and reflections of others.

The next day small “Discovery Sessions” allowed break out groups to discuss plans for the achieving future growth.

Inchcape’s Scottish heritage also featured heavily in entertainment surrounding the event, with bagpipe workshops, Scottish dancing and a traditional Scottish Gala Dinner and annual awards ceremony.

Jess Littman, Head of Events at Line Up, comments:

‘This was a spectacular conference. We drew a lot of inspiration from the company’s rich heritage and focused on making every delegate feel an individual part of the Inchcape story. The key message was that they will write the next chapter in the story, so now is the time to leverage their confidence, courage and commitment in order to focus on achieving incredible growth’.

Line Up handled every aspect of the event, from experiential production to video, web and content design, delegate management and logistics.

An online business training firm whose website is used by 15m people a year in 129 countries, has been awarded Britain’s highest business honour – a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its achievements in International Trade.

MindTools.com, whose UK base is in West Sussex, offers over 1,000 online leadership, management and career development resources to busy professionals and corporate clients around the world.  Last year more than 80% of the company’s sales came from overseas.  The company has just 7 UK employees and 22 staff worldwide.

Customers of Mind Tools include 10,000 individual consumers as well as large corporate clients such as TomTom in the Netherlands, financial services company RBC Dexia in Luxembourg and Canada, and pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim in North America.   Mind Tools also works with government agencies in several countries including the UK,  the US, Canada and Australia.

Mind Tools offers hundreds of high quality articles for free, which people can access via the website, a weekly email newsletter, or dedicated iPhone and iPad apps.  Individuals and companies who take a subscription to the Mind Tools Club gain unlimited access to a wider and richer set of training resources, which includes articles, workbooks, videos, and podcast interviews and book reviews.

James Manktelow, Founder and CEO of MindTools.com, and author of seven books on leadership and team management, comments:

“We are incredibly proud to be amongst today’s Queen’s Award winners.  We’re in the business of helping other people achieve excellence in whatever they do – so to be honoured for our own business excellence is particularly satisfying.  We have no doubt that our Queen’s Award will give the business a tremendous boost both here and overseas.  We have fantastic team of people here at Mind Tools, and this is really great recognition for everyone’s hard work.”

Rachel Thompson, Director of the Mind Tools Club, adds:

“Our aim is to equip business people around the world with all the skills and training they need to make the most of their lives and careers.  450,000 people are signed up to our weekly e-newsletter, and 250,000 have downloaded our mobile apps since we launched them last year. The business has grown largely through recommendation, and our Queen’s Award will really help cement our global reputation.”

Announced annually on 21^st April, The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are widely regarded as the UK’s top business accolade – the equivalent of a knighthood for companies.  Winners are entitled to use the coveted Queen’s Award Emblem in their marketing for 5 years as a marque of their success.  Each winning company is presented personally with a trophy by a representative of Her Majesty at a ceremony at its offices later in the year.  Winners are also invited to a reception atBuckinghamPalace.

Business and Enterprise Minister, Mark Prisk said:

“The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the highest accolade a business can receive. The standard of this year’s winners highlights the great work taking place by businesses of all sizes to help boost the growth of the UK economy. I hope that it will inspire more entrepreneurs to start or grow their business as we look to make 2012 the year of enterprise.

“It is a fantastic achievement for all of the businesses that have received an award and I would like to congratulate them on making such a valuable contribution across all business sectors.”

]]> http://www.highlightpr.co.uk/mind-tools-wins-uks-top-business-honour/feed/ 0 http://www.highlightpr.co.uk/line-up-team-lines-up-for-charity-run/ http://www.highlightpr.co.uk/line-up-team-lines-up-for-charity-run/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:01:02 +0000 Nick Vellacott http://www.highlightpr.co.uk/?p=3245

Experiential marketing agency Line Up is to field a team of 13 enthusiastic amateur joggers for this year’s Richmond Park 10k on 9^th June 2012 in order to raise money for UK based charity Connect.

Hopes are to raise over £5,000 for the charity, which helps people suffering from aphasia, a communication disability that can arise after a stroke or brain trauma.

Line Up has chosen to run for Connect as it has been playing a big part in the recovery of Duncan Beale, the company’s managing director, who suffered a major brain haemorrhage at the start of last year, leaving him hospitalised for several months.

With ten weeks left to train before the event, Jess Littman, Head of B2B Events at Line Up, comments:

“The competition between runners is already hotting up.  For a collection of individuals not all renowned for their sporting prowess, it’s amazing the effort everyone is making to support this great cause.”

Anyone wishing to support the Line Up team and the work of Connect can do so by visiting Line Up’s JustGiving team page  and sponsoring one of the runners.

Line Up, the experiential marketing and content creation agency, has announced a series of promotions and created a new senior management team in this, the agency’s 30^th year in business.

Jess Littman, who joined Line Up as a senior producer last year, has been promoted to Head of Events (B2B), whilst content producer Lawrence Andrews has been promoted to Head of Content, with responsibility for all video, digital, animated and app-based content development.  They join Rupert Cheswright, Head of Experiential, Kate Gunn, Head of Logistics and Mark Bell, Technical Director, in a new five-strong senior management team.

At the same time, long-standing senior producer Kath Wallace has been promoted to Associate Director.   She will work alongside managing director Rob Leach and finance director Gerry O’Leary on the overall strategic direction and growth of the agency.

Collectively, the new senior management team is tasked with exploring imaginative new ways of delivering rich event, video and digital content for clients in the corporate event, consumer brand experience and incentive travel markets.

“These changes are about enhancing the service we offer our existing valued clients in terms of new ideas and technologies, whilst also attracting fresh interest from other like-minded businesses and brands,” said Rob Leach, managing director of Line Up.  “2012 is already shaping up to be our best year ever by some way, and this new structure gives us the right platform from which to build on that success.”

Rob Leach added:

“I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the industry for their on-going concern and good wishes for my co-director, Duncan Beale, who suffered a major brain haemorrhage at the beginning of last year. Duncancontinues to make a slow but steady recovery, and though he is not actively involved in the business at present, I know he is immensely proud that Line Up remains such a force in the industry thirty years after he first founded it.”

London-based creative agency Knifedge has produced another set of dramatic theatrical projections to act as the backdrop to a major new production of Verdi’s ‘Aida’ at The Royal Albert Hall.

This latest production of Verdi’s operatic masterpiece is co-produced by Raymond Gubbay and The Royal Albert Hall, and directed by Stephen Medcalf.  It is widely regarded as Verdi’s most epic opera, telling the tragic story of a classic love triangle between slave girl Aida, the King’s daughter Amneris, and Captain of the Guards, Radames.

Knifedge’s latest visual effects paint evocative pictures of Ancient Egypt onto huge curved gauzes, stretching around almost a quarter of the venue.  The agency has worked closely with set designer Isabella Bywater and lighting designerAndrewBridgeto blend its imagery into the overall design of the show.  From a technical stand point, the rig consists of six 20K projections, driven by a Catalyst media server and run from a Hog lighting desk.

Nina Dunn, Knifedge’s lead projection designer for this show, comments:

“From the outset, Isabella Bywater gave us a strong vision of what she was looking for from our projections, which provide half of the entire scenic design for this show.  With the help of Knifedge designers Louise Rhodes-Brown and Ilyas Khad, we’ve used a rich combination of photographic imagery, 3D renders, 2D drawings, animation and filmic effects to create the scene-setting projections.”

Dunn continues:

“One of the challenges was to ensure that the scale and composition of the images was appropriate for the size of the venue.  When projecting the inside of a temple, for example, we wanted the audience to feel like they are actually inside that temple, not simply looking at an image of it.  We also knew that technical rehearsal time in the Royal Albert Hall would be at a premium, so we designed a solution which could be pre-programmed in advance, minimising set-up time for such complex image constructions.”

AIDA opened at The Royal Albert Hall on 23 February and runs at the venue until Sunday 11^th March 2012.

Norland College, the Bath-based childcare college, has retained Highlight PR to help build its profile as a leading voice within the UK childcare industry.

Founded in 1892, Norland College has been training nannies for 120 years, and offers one of the UK’s most professional courses in childcare, based on the latest research.  In 2009, Norland also opened its own nursery in Bath, offering daycare to 61 local children.

As well as positioning Norland as a centre of childcare excellence, Highlight is tasked with boosting the profile of two Norland experts as influential spokespeople on childcare training and early years education.  Both Claire Burgess, Senior Lecturer at Norland College and Clare Crowther, Head of Norland Nursery, are currently working with the Government on key forthcoming reviews into early years education.

In October, Norland will be staging a national conference in Bath for childcare professionals, at which research surrounding children’s wellbeing will be presented by leading industry experts.  Highlight will again play a key role in publicising the research and the conference to the media.

Alison Vellacott, director of Highlight PR, comments: “Norland is an organisation with a remarkable heritage in childcare training.  Yet its experts are not yet widely quoted in the media and many people are unaware of the breadth of the College’s offering.  We look forward to helping change that throughout the next 12 months.”

Highlight was appointed without a pitch, following a series of successful PR, digital and social media projects for the College in 2011.

Highlight PR has been appointed by licensing agent Metrostar to promote a new range of Dear Zoo licensed products to coincide with the 30^th Anniversary of the classic picture book.

Dear Zoo was written by Rod Campbell a generation ago, and has since sold over 5 million copies worldwide.  The popular story tells of a child writing to the zoo to ask for a pet, and then being sent a variety of inappropriate zoo animals before ending up with the perfect pet in the end – a puppy.

To mark the 30^th Anniversary, a new range of Dear Zoo soft toys, puzzles, bags, clothing and ceramic baby gifts has been launched at retail stores and online across the UK.

Highlight’s brief is to boost awareness of the new products across national parenting and women’s lifestyle press, as well as reaching out to relevant websites and mummy bloggers.

Alison Vellacott, director of Highlight PR comments: “Dear Zoo is a wonderful, timeless story which is loved by kids and parents worldwide.  Its simple, bold visuals lend themselves perfectly to appealing to kids and baby products, and we’re looking forward to helping drive sales through well-placed features, product reviews and gift guides in key consumer media.”

The iconic white bunny character was created by Dutch illustrator, Dick Bruna, nearly 60 years ago and the new App for iPad now offers a great new way for parents with young children to share the delights of this classic storybook character.

The App, ‘Miffy’s Garden’, is suitable for children over 2 years, and brings to life the story of when Miffy first discovers the joys of gardening with her parents. She learns to turn over the soil, plant seeds and watch her crop of carrots grow. Children can get stuck in too, by ‘digging’ ‘raking’, ‘sowing’ and ‘watering’ the garden, using simple stroke, swipe or tap actions on the iPad screen.
Miffy takes the number one position on the UK iTunes chart for paid for book apps, above other established children’s characters such as Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank.

This is the first Miffy App anywhere in the world.  Miffy’s Dutch creator, Dick Bruna comments: “It is 57 years since I first drew Miffy on paper, so I’m delighted that she is now being introduced to a whole new generation of readers in this way. The App brings the story of ‘Miffy’s Garden’ to life, and gives children the chance to interact with the book and enjoy the Miffy character through the games. Anything which makes the learning to read experience more fun and involving is really rather wonderful.”

‘Miffy’s Garden’ App for iPad is available to buy from the App Store priced £2.49.  This is a special offer available until 6 March 2012. After that date the app will cost £2.99.

The new App has been developed by Dutch-based media company, Sanoma Media Netherlands B.V.  There are plans for more Miffy stories to be created into Apps very soon.

To download the App from the iTunes store, click here:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/de-tuin-van-nijntje/id495662581?l=nl&ls=1&mt=8