Novatech’s Big LED Looks at the 2024 NAIDOC Awards

Held each year at the culmination of NAIDOC Week, the NAIDOC Awards celebrate indigenous excellence in culture, leadership, art, sport, and community. The 2024 ceremony was held Saturday 6 July in Tarndanya/Adelaide at The Adelaide Convention Centre, hosted by Steph Tisdell and Rob Collins. Broadcast live on the ABC, around 2,000 live guests saw Aunty Muriel Bamblett win NAIDOC Person of the Year and Aunty Dulcie Flower AM receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, before a spectacular reveal of Jess Mauboy and her band to cap off the night.

Production design and event management was by Wrapped Creations, an indigenous event company out of Perth and Karratha, Western Australia, headed by CEO David Yakas. Wrapped engaged Adelaide’s Novatech Creative Event Technology to supply spectacular LED screen solutions for the event, including the ingenious engineering behind the Jess Mauboy reveal.

Along the sprawling space of the combined F, G, and H Halls of the Convention Centre, Novatech installed two massive 36 x 4 metre ROE Visual Vanish LED screens flanking the sidewalls, showing IMAG, PiP and AUSLAN interpretation. On the main stage, the main LED screen was 10.8 x 6 metres, made of ROE Visual CB3 panels. To the side of the main screen stood three LED pillars, 1.8 metres wide by 6 metres high, also constructed of ROE Visual CB3 panels.

“Wrapped Creations designed the staging to have the house band on stage right, and the presentations on stage left,” explains Ashley Gabriel, Director of Sales and Marketing at Novatech. “There was a thrust for people to come up to a centre stage, and beyond that, they just wanted a clean look. They wanted to hide all of Jess Mauboy’s backline and gear so it would be a surprise when she closed the show. We had some discussions and came up with a solution.”

The solution was to split the main LED screen into two halves, 5.4 meters wide by 6 tall, and mount them on a track so they could roll away, hiding the band and Jess upstage for the reveal. When the time came, a stagehand each side simply pulled the screen apart, and Jess and the band fired up!

“The track we used was Bomac Altrac from Melbourne; they manufacture a lot of equipment for industries like mining,” reveals Ashley. “Wrapped Creations came up with the idea of having an animated graphic of dot-painted hands moving the screens, as the hands image was part of the NAIDOC Week messaging. Between the video content, great timing by the stagehands, and a fantastic shot from the ABC, it looked great on screen!”

To help convey the concepts to the various and numerous stakeholders involved, Novatech’s Principal Designer and Innovator, Christopher Bolton, created a series of renders as part of his design of the room that encompassed the layout of the screens, the stage set, and a comprehensive lighting design. Using Unreal engine, the renders enabled speedy turnaround and visualisation for everyone involved to approve the designs and overall look of the room.

A lot of work went on behind the scenes to balance the needs of the live event in the room and the broadcast. The event’s Technical Director Darren Tempany, from TechPlus Live in Perth, contributed to the design, worked with all suppliers on site, and called the show. Novatech’s Christopher Bolton, worked with the Adelaide Convention Centre’s lighting crew to ensure the ABC’s needs were met, while the Adelaide Convention Centre handled lighting and audio.

“The main technical issue you have to be careful of when filming LED screens is moiré,” continues Ashley. “That’s a shimmering effect that makes the pixels look like they’re moving on camera. We chose ROE Visual LED CB3 LED panels with 3.75mm pixel pitch, processed with Brompton processing. After testing colour, balance, and brightness, the ABC loved the look.”