Background

The Edinburgh Film Festival has successfully run since its first conception in 1949 and has established itself as one of the world’s first international film festivals. It is known now for consistently producing innovative and dynamic programme of films and events and attracts some of the biggest names in film.

Brief

• To design, create and install venue boards including graphics for the Filmhouse Cinema and Cineworld cinema during the Film Festival period.
• To supply and install red carpets for the all red carpet events, opening and closing night film galas and parties.
• To dress the delegate centre area with appropriate lighting, set and dressing as necessary to transform the room into a place for receiving delegates and other guests of the film festival.

Operation

In conjunction with the EIFF design team, Big House Events developed set pieces to include weather resistant pvc cover for the graphic boards. The boards of dimensions 16 metres x 3 metres were mounted outside Cineworld and the Filmhouse cinema and covered a large external area.

Using our specialist team of carpenters and set specialist we built the set pieces using timber from renewable sources in the workshop space. Each piece was created separately and then installed in completion on site.

The room used for the delegate centre was a plain white room and as such was lacking in any wow factor that was associated with the film festival. Big House Events set to transforming this room using light, colour and fabric draping. White hung fabric was used to soften the edges of the room and to create a relaxing, intimate place for delegates to stay and network in. Coloured uplighting was situated along the edges of the room and the film festival logo was projected onto the white fabric.

The room was populated with a variety of seating arrangements from large red sofas to table and chairs and a bar situated at one end of the room to transform an empty white box into a relaxing and stylish place to be.

Operational restrictions became apparent and we had to work with a low roof and very low power supply in the Delegate Centre. As a result we optimised the lighting design to include small uplighters and LED lighting to work within the constrains of both elements above.

Results

The film festival maintained a large and exciting presence in the City of Edinburgh throughout the month of June and this was helped through the dressing of both the Filmhouse cinema and Cineworld, which were important visual reminders to passing members of public that the festival was indeed in town! This was particulary important for 2008 as the Festival was breaking away from it’s traditional place in August to take place earlier in the year in June.