Working for Robbie Williams Productions and designer Ala Lloyd of Stufish, we provided a staging and scenic package for the naming ceremony of this brand new superliner at the new P&O Ocean Terminal in Southampton. The al fresco ceremony took place on the Aqua Deck and required us to cover over the swimming pool in order to provide a 130m2 dance floor and performance area suitable for the participating dancers and special celebrity guest, Darcey Bussell. We also constructed a presenter platform, complete with an old-fashioned movie camera prop that was reached via a curved staircase.

The pool was joisted over and in-filled to the edge of the splash wall with staging units and decking, clad with ply and finished with exterior paint. A 9m by 7.5m anti-slip vinyl logo was applied to the dance floor. The curved staircase to the presenter platform was completed with a decorative handrail of steel and painted ply, incorporating a bold flower motif produced using our CNC facilities. We dressed the 2.1m high presenter platform with a fascia of 3m wide blue serge drapes, also using these drapes to mask bar and production areas.

On the presenter stage itself, along with providing a logo for the lectern, we also manufactured the key bottle-smash prop of an old-fashioned movie camera, complete with a 100m roll of black ribbon ‘film’. This ran around the reel and up into the ship’s superstructure where it attached to the bottle-smash device, bolted to the ship. In place of scissors, we provided a clapperboard, which was used by Darcey Bussell to ‘cut’ the film and release the bottle-smash at the appropriate moment. As well as providing around twenty 7m by 4m cream felt flats used for general masking around the ship, we also provided a large ‘Azura’ naming panel, 10m wide by 3m tall, which was attached to the ship superstructure.

At the equivalent of 16 stories up, we had the time consuming job of craning in all of our kit directly from the quayside. With the inaugural cruise departing the day after the get-out, our crew of six worked hard to quickly dismantle the set and remove everything from site within the tight deadline.