Professional Lighting & Production - Fall 2017 | Page 16

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nown for its roster
of A-list surprise guests, this year’s edition
of Drake’s annual OVO Fest, which was
held on Aug. 7 th at Toronto’s Budweis-
er Stage, featured appearances by The
Weeknd, Nelly, Travis Scott, Cardi B, Migos,
French Montana, Tory Lanez, Rae Srem-
murd, and more. But maybe the star of
the show – aside from Drake – was the CN
Tower. For this one-off event, and with only
three weeks of lead-time, Drake enlisted Las
Vegas’ Show Group Production Services
(SGPS) to build a replica of the iconic
Toronto structure. Eric Pearce and his team
at SGPS had just three weeks to go from
design to delivery. Drake’s production team,
led by GP-SK Design, supplied the designs
and scaled reference and imagery of the
CN Tower. From the stage at the show,
Drake said he called 19 companies who all
declined because of the ultra-tight timeline
before SGPS agreed.