Each June, Dunedin’s Octagon is brought to life with the many faces and colours of Dunedin’s annual Midwinter Carnival. The iconic celebration remains a pillar of Dunedin’s community scene, and attracts an annual turnout of 10,000 patrons in celebration of our distinctive seasons. The festivities incorporate over 1000 volunteers and performers who are involved with all facets of the event experience.

Beginning at 4:00pm with food stalls, live music and fire dancers, as well as a craft market and lantern making workshops, the Carnival experience builds towards the Lantern Procession at 6:00pm, before finishing with a Grand Finale at 7:00pm. The Lantern Procession is a crowd-favourite and showcases giant lanterns that are hand-crafted by local artists and smaller lanterns made by patrons. There are also hundreds of costumed performers of all ages who work together to present a diverse and vibrant performance that encapsulates Dunedin’s local community, environment and culture.

The Carnival has been running since 2010, and this year the team decided to take a fresh approach with a patron’s experience in mind, and level up through adding more stages, moving the food vendors and craft stalls into a dedicated market area, and having a larger parade. To top it off they made the decision to move away from fireworks to a safer and more sustainable Grand Finale that was aligned with their ethos. This presented Gravity Events the opportunity to come up with some innovative ideas that could still deliver that impressive WOW factor.

Pre-Event Deliverables

A larger show meant more resources and crew would be required. Our team loves a good challenge and got stuck into the planning process to deliver a memorable patron experience within the clients criteria and event requirements.

Creating a new event centrepiece

Solution: Deliver some of the most impressive projection mapping Dunedin has ever seen.

Our projection mapping team set up the equipment the day prior to the event and worked late into the night to get the projectors and content lined up and mapped perfectly onto the building, ready to wow the crowds. It did not disappoint - Enthralled crowds were transported to an alternative world, as the projection danced upon St Paul’s Cathedral.

Planning and organising; This was one of the biggest events we have worked on and Gravity was supplying nearly every aspect of production for the event, so it had to work smoothly!

Solution: This required proactive meetings and meticulous planning to ensure that everything would run smoothly. We have a great team with experience in many different areas to ensure a smooth and efficient process.

Logistics: Not only are we supplying a huge amount of equipment and services, but the roads surrounding the event site can only be closed for the event day which meant a short timeframe for our set-up.

Solution: Everything had to be well planned and prepped in advance with plenty of crew so that we could be set up within a short timeframe. Our team on the day consisted of sound engineers, stage hands, techs to help with the power distribution, and of course an AV tech to operate the projectors.

Event Deliverables:

Projection mapping

For the Carnival’s Grand Finale we used our new state of the art Panasonic laser projectors and Resolume media server to projection map onto the St Paul’s Cathedral.

We worked with local artist Oana Jones who created the iconic content for the project.

Sound

We supplied PA systems and Sound Engineers for all three event stages. We got to work with some fantastic local bands including Dee May and the Saints, along with The Dodgy Disco Band!

Staging

We provided stage risers for fire dancers & performers in the Octagon and our covered trailer stage for more street performers.

Lighting

We provided a range of lighting including:

Lighting for the stages that created a dynamic and multi-layered look.
A disco ball installation in the Octagon Carriageway with some of our Pointe moving heads to draw attention to them, and enhance their impact.
Flood lighting to illuminate the First Church grounds where the lantern making workshops were taking place, transforming the area into a user-friendly and enjoyable moment for patrons.
LED pars for ambient lighting around the carnival site, creating an encapsulating experience that was authentic to the event vision.

Power Distribution

Our team supplied generators and power distribution for the entire event, getting power to all of the food vendors, market stalls, stages, projectors & lighting installations.

We also helped to manage the placement of food vendors and get them set up and in position in a timely manner.

LED Screen

We supplied an LED screen to display sponsor slides throughout the event.

Event Communication

Once the planning is done and the execution has begun, there is nothing more important than good communication. We supplied 20 RT Radios to make sure that the organising team could communicate with each other throughout the event.

A core part of our philosophy at Gravity Events is giving back and supporting the community so we were very proud to be a Silver Partner sponsor of the Midwinter Carnival. We would like to give a special thanks to the planning & production team for the passion, dedication & endless hours that they put into bringing this event to life. The event would not happen without you and the hard work does not go unnoticed - the Gravity team are already ticking away with ideas for next year’s carnival!

Case Study: Gravity Events + Dunedin MidWinter Carnival