TPi September 2018 - #229

TOTAL PRODUCTION INTERNATIONAL LIVE EVENT DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY • SEPTEMBER 2018 • ISSUE 229 WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO FIND, DOWN IN THE PIG MINE?

ROGER WATERS THE THEATRICAL ROCK LEGEND BRINGS THE LATEST TOUR TECHNOLOGY TO ROME’S ANCIENT CIRCO MASSIMO

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Capacity 250 kg - 12000 kg WE’RE TRAPPED IN A DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE There’s been several shows which have stuck with me during the course of my time writing about live events, but nothing like the senses-engulfing mega concert from Roger Waters and his phenomenal team. Lauren and I travelled to Rome in July (we’ll go anywhere for good pizza to be fair), to see Waters’ largest outdoor show on his Us + Them tour. Set in the magnificent ruins of Circo Massimo, the show truly was on another level. Universal Pixels delivered the biggest telly we’d ever seen, we had the pleasure of watching Jon Lemon mix at FOH and Strictly FX created a laser prism worth writing home about. I mean, there’s nothing like watching a giant inflatable pig circle overhead while ancient buildings house politically-inclined Pink Floyd fans. Thank you so much for having us! (We’re pictured above with the tour’s PM, Chris Kansy).

To find out how the production came together - and how Video Director Richard Turner of Lucky Frog melted my brain in the most brilliant way - turn to Pg. 36 to go on a journey to The Dark Side of the Moon... We also enter into the mad world of Ms. Katy Perry, as Ste talks to the crew behind her latest tour design, Queen + Adam Lambert take the stage at Glasgow’s TRNSMT festival while Sam Smith makes a reappearance during his North American tour as the audio department talk shop with Stew. Plus there’s lots more tech tales including festival news from Outline and Powersoft with Rockin’1,000, d&b audiotechnik set up at WOMAD and Funktion-One sounds out France’s Electrobeach event.

I’ll leave you with the news that Music Bank has officially opened it’s new doors in Acton, London. I can also confirm that the fancy new rehearsal studios are most inviting, and that Jimmy Mac’s dogs are very cuddly. He tells the story of 25 years in business on Pg. 100. And finally, If you’re heading to PLASA London or the Knight of Illuminations this year, the team will see you there!

Kel Murray Editor EDITOR Kel Murray Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8360 Mobile: +44 (0)7738 154689 e-mail: k.murray@mondiale.co.uk

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Justin Gawne Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8360 Mobile: +44 (0)7768 850767 e-mail: j.gawne@mondiale.co.uk

ASSISTANT EDITOR Ste Durham Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8385 Mobile: +44 (0)7891 679742 e-mail: s.durham@mondiale.co.uk

GRAPHIC DESIGN & PRODUCTION Dan Seaton: d.seaton@mondiale.co.uk Zoe Willcox: z.willcox@mondiale.co.uk

ASSISTANT EDITOR Stewart Hume Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8385 Mobile: +44 (0)7702 054344 e-mail: s.hume@mondiale.co.uk ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE Lauren Dyson Tel: +44 (0)161 476 9119 Mobile: +44 (0)7415 773639 e-mail: l.dyson@mondiale.co.uk ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE Lyndsey Hopwood Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8360 Mobile: +44 (0)7800 557094 e-mail: l.hopwood@mondiale.co.uk GENERAL MANAGER - TPi MAGAZINE & AWARDS Hannah Eakins Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8360 Mobile: +44 (0)7760 485230 e-mail: h.eakins@mondiale.co.uk www.tpimagazine.com www.tpiawards.com

ACCOUNTS Lynette Levi / Sarah Miller: ar@mondiale.co.uk MONDIALE GROUP CHAIRMAN Damian Walsh

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DIGITAL EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jacob Waite: j.waite@mondiale.co.uk EDITORIAL INTERN James Robertson COVER Roger Waters by Kate Izor PRINTED BY Buxton Press • www.buxpress.co.uk Issue 229 - September 2018 Annual subscriptions (including P&P): £42 (UK), £60 (Europe), £78/$125 (RoW).

Subscription enquiries to: Subscriptions, Mondiale Publishing Limited, Strawberry Studios, Watson Square, Stockport, SK1 3AZ, UK. Tel: +44 (0)161 476 5580 Fax: +44 (0)161 476 0456 e-mail: subscriptions@mondiale.co.uk

TOTAL PRODUCTION INTERNATIONAL is a controlled circulation magazine, published 12 times a year by Mondiale Publishing Limited under licence.

ISSN 1461-3786 Copyright © 2018 Mondiale Publishing Limited. All contents of this publication are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, in any form whatsoever, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Every effort is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication but neither Mondiale Publishing Ltd, nor the Editor, can be held responsible for its contents or any consequential loss or damage resulting from information published. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Publishers or Editor. The Publishers accept no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, illustrations, advertising materials or artwork. Total Production International USPS: (ISSN 1461 3786) is published 12 times a year by Mondiale Publishing Limited United Kingdom. The 2018 US annual subscription price is 117USD. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by Agent named Air Business, C/O WorldNet Shipping USA Inc., 155-11 146th Avenue, Jamaica, New York, NY11434. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431. US Postmaster: Send address changes to Total Production International, Air Business Ltd, C/O WorldNet Shipping USA Inc., 155-11 146th Avenue, Jamaica, New York, NY11434.

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ITINERARY

EVENT FOCUS

10

36

10

Sam Smith TPi’s Stew Hume speaks to the artist’s audio crew.

16

Quincy Jones: A Life in Song Senbla brought in Ben M Rogers to light a special birthday celebration.

20 The Luna Cinema

AC-ET and NEXO join forces for this

summer’s Football World Cup. 24

28

32

Glassjaw For their Brixton show, LD Hayden Borgars, chose Philips Vari-Lite VL800.

CPL Invests The company has made a £2m investment in the latest video tech.

Festival and Outdoor Events Show The trade show introduces the new SaFest Training Zone.

34 P!nk

The performer once again puts her faith in Sennheiser.

PRODUCTION PROFILE 36

Roger Waters: Us + Them tour Kel witness the Pink Floyd singer’s latest live offering in the epic surrounding of Rome’s Circo Massimo.

62 Katy Perry Ste gets a front row seat to yet another KP bonkers bonanza!

82

This month: Lovebox, Electrobeach Music Festival and much more...

IN PROFILE 100 Music Bank celebrates 25 years in style

with owner Trevor Horn performing

classic tracks at its new Acton HQ.

MARKET FOCUS 104 TPi profiles the innovations in Followspot technology.

PRODUCTION FUTURES

76

116 With the Hog Factor making its home at

this Production Futures 2018, TPi looks

back at the history of the event.

GEAR HEADS 118 Pioneer Pro Audio’s Alex Barrand

discusses the new addition to the XY

Series - the XY-3B and XY-2.

PSA: THE BIGGER PICTURE 120 Rob Halliday gives an update on #SaveStageLighting.

INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS

82

122 The latest movers and shakers.

BACK CHAT 130 TPi talks to automation expert, Jody Diaz Francis.

WITH

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62

FESTIVAL FOCUS

YBRID H T C OMPA SMARTS! THE C E STAG

U

76 TRNSMT TPi heads for Glasgow Green to speak to the crew of the annual 2 -weekend festival.

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EVENT FOCUS

SAM SMITH

SAM SMITH: THE THRILL OF IT ALL TPi checked back in with the Sam Smith crew, this time focusing on the innovative audio set up tasked with providing the soundtrack to the singer’s theatrical tour. Stew Hume reports…

This was not the first time TPi had crossed paths with Sam Smith’s touring entourage. Early this year, we had the pleasure of witnessing The Thrill of it All at Manchester Area while speaking to the trio of creatives - Lee Lodge, Jason Sherwood and Tim Routledge - that brought the artist’s theatrical vision for the tour to life. With over 50 performances under their belts, the crew are very much in the swing of things as they prep for the second North American leg. This time TPi bent the ear of the audio department to discover how they approached this unconventional stage set up.

For the uninitiated, The Thrill of It All is certainly an ambitious production. Throwing the traditional stage set up out of the window, the creative team dreamt up a set where Smith, his band and backing vocalists

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played the entire show on a catwalk thrust that extended into the crowd, all of which was overshadowed by a giant upstage shard structure.

Capital Sound was tasked with providing an elaborate d&b audiotechnik J-Series system for the tour. System Tech Liam Halpin was responsible for creating the design. Having collaborated with Capital Sound on several other projects, he has become the ‘go-to engineer’ for d&b gigs. “The initial renders for this tour started to come in at the end of 2017,” began Halpin. “I was working on another gig with Capital Sound at the time, so they asked for my thoughts on the design.” Regrettably Halpin’s time on that tour was cut short due to an ankle injury - a blessing in disguise as it gave him time to focus on Smith’s PA design.

From the beginning of the project Halpin admitted how the design

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SAM SMITH

was always going to be complex. “As I’ve been telling people throughout the run; this is not an in-the-round show and it’s not a stage with a large thrust,” he stated, joking, “It’s a bastard child of both!” To find the ideal system, Halpin spent months using d&b ArrayCalc simulation software modelling various options of array hangs to ensure constant coverage for each audience member. “An issue we had to contend with was the production’s decision to not have subs on the floor,” stated Halpin.

This resulted in some very innovative hangs to ensure equal coverage throughout each venue. In total Halpin deployed 80 d&b J8’s (flown in 4 arrays of 20 cabinets), 32 d&b V8’s (flown in 2 arrays of 16 cabinets) and 24 d&b J-Subs (flown in 6 arrays of 4 cabinets). Also on the rig were 4 d&b J-Infra Subwoofers, positioned downstage and 4 d&b V-Sub, in 2 stacks of 2 cabinets, either side of stage by the tech bunker. “During each performance there were audience members sitting all the way along the catwalk,” said Halpin. “To ensure they had the best sound image possible we installed 22 d&b T10 cabinets, mounted to stage structure with bespoke fittings.”

Halpin also used the tour to replicate a networking system he had previously trialled on Craig David’s last run. Using the d&b DS10’s, Halpin set up the system so the amps could monitor the signal flow via the Dante network. “Essentially, if there was a problem with the signal getting

through the Dante network to the main d&b DS10’s, the amps would pick up on this issue within a second, and automatically switch over to the backup unit,” explained Halpin. The issues that could be detected include a failure of the Lake LM44 processors, its network connections or any issues with the main d&b DS10. This includes any power failures of those devices. This infrastructure reflects an ongoing trend within the events industry whereby system techs need to see a fuller picture of any potential design. “This went for our power distros built by SES Entertainment Services,” continued Halpin. “Each one has a networked power metre so we can monitor them constantly alongside our amplifier network. The days of shrugging your shoulders, blaming a power issue are long gone I’m afraid and system techs need to know what’s going on during a show. It’s more leg work on the networking side but finding the answer to any issue that crops up in a matter of seconds is priceless!”

FOH Engineer, Jim Ebdon was at the helm of the d&b audiotechnik system for the tour. He explained how this was his first full outing with a d&b system having only previously come across the PA at one-off shows and festivals. “I was curious to see what it could do, especially with all the good things I’d heard from colleagues in the industry - needless to say it has not disappointed!” Ebdon admitted the show did test his abilities, as he was mixing in a foreign environment. “Instead of mixing in stereo, I was

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SAM SMITH

Above: FOH Engineer, Jim Ebdon; System Tech Liam Halpin; The hard working audio team, cosisiting of Dan Leaver, Bhekii Phakethi, Liam Halpin, Jim Ebdon, Saul Skoutarides and Lee Fox-Furnell; RF guru, George Hogan; Monitor and Stage Technician, Lee Fox-Furnell; Monitor Engineer Saul Skoutarides.

situated in front of one of the arrays,” he explained. “I also was missing the usual ‘thud’ of a ground sub with the majority of our low end coming from the air.” But despite mixing in these uncharted waters, the FOH Engineer has been impressed with the results. “We spent a long period in band rehearsals in Lake Como. The band mixes I created then have transferred really well to the J-Series system.”

Throughout Smith’s live performance, the singer took the audience through his varied back catalogue which ranged from sombre ballads to upbeat club tracks. “The dynamic range is really quite incredible on this tour,” mused Ebdon. “Volume is often one of my key concerns. Sam really sings from the heart and in those more intimate moments, the last thing I would want to do as a FOH Engineer is to over amplify his voice and make it sound unnatural.”

To capture Smith’s voice, the production opted for the Sennheiser MD 5235’s capsule. “From there, Sam’s vocals goes through a 1073 Neve Preamp then into the stage racks. This helps achieve a more analogue quality to his voice,” said Ebdon.

Striving for an analogue tone was one of the Engineer’s main goals for the tour - especially when trying to replicate the latest album. “The Thrill of it All’s production was really interesting,” he explained. “Most of the album was recorded as a 16 track analogue. There were very few clever production tricks, just great mixing. It sounds very warm with a big sound, and was something I wanted to replicate in the live mix.”

The Solid State Logic SSL 200 was Ebdon’s console of choice.

“Ergonomically, it’s the best desk for me,” he enthused. “From the way the faders are laid out to the characteristics of the mix bus, it’s such a great console.” The FOH Engineer was particularly complementary of the desk’s modern features; specifically the touch screens, which had become “essential in [his] workflow while programming this tour.”

Other essential elements of Ebdon’s rig were a pair of Tube-Techs CL 1B’s which are both used for Smith’s vocals. The Engineer also used Waves’ SG Extreme Server V3 with a selection of plugins for the main bus mix along with several Universal Audio plugins via a Soundcraft Realtime rack. Ebdon dubbed everything within Universal Audio’s range “fantastic” but gave special mention to the compressors which he described as being “phenomenal”.

Saul Skoutarides handled Monitor Engineering for the tour, working alongside Lee Fox-Furnell, Capital Sound’s Monitor and Stage Technician and RF guru, George Hogan. Skoutarides joined the team in November 2017 and worked alongside Ebdon during the band rehearsals at Lake Como. For control the Engineer opted for a DiGiCo SD7. “The SD7 is ideal for this style of show,” began Skoutarides. “The versatility in the automation

is second to none.” The Engineer also used 2 TC Electronic M6000’s for his “important reverbs”. He continued: “I also have a Cranesong STC-8 inserted over Sam’s mix for a bit of analogue warmth.” Another rig highlight was the Cedar DNS 8 Live. “As we are almost in-the-round, it helps me filter out some of the room artifacts from the vocal microphones,” he stated.

Sennheiser 2000 was the choice for IEMs. Skoutarides explained what Smith requested for his personal mix. “Honestly he’s pretty easygoing simply requesting a good band mix with himself on top. As long as he can pitch we are golden - and that man can sing!” With such a clean stage design wedges were always going to be an issue but to aid the band, Skoutarides included a Porter & Davies drum thumper for the drummer and a footplate for the bassist.

“This has been a great project to work on,” concluded Skoutarides.

“All the band and crew are great. Capital has been very helpful both in the planning stages and with support as the tour goes on. I’ve been working with them on and off over the past 10 years and they’re a great company with good people!” It was a sentiment shared by Ebdon. “I’ve actually known Martin [Connolly] and Keith [Davis] for almost 30 years but this is the first time we have ever got to collaborate officially. I’m glad to report I have been very happy with the result.”

Capital Sound’s Account Manager, Martin Connolly, gave his thoughts on the tour: “It’s been an absolute pleasure putting this tour together with Sam’s production team. I love the way this tour has developed from the amazing design work that Liam has put in, Saul’s intense monitor setup, all the way down to Jim making the hairs on the back on my next stand up with his wonderful mix. The entire touring team are doing a fantastic job!”

Also giving his thoughts on the work of the audio team was Production Manager, Wob Roberts. “When we first started discussing this tour back in July last year, we made a conscious decision to put quality of the the audio at the top of the list of important things to consider. Now, when you listen to the show the guys have created, I think I can say without fear of contradiction it’s a job well done!”

With the crew’s well-earned break coming to an end, September sees the beginning of the second leg of the US tour before making their way to south east Asia. “The rest of our year is fairly busy,” concluded Halpin expressing how he and the rest of the crew were itching to get back on the road with “fresh ears” to continuing bringing The Thrill of it All to the singer’s loyal following!

TPi Photo: James Barber www.samsmithworld.com www.capital-sound.co.uk 14

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EVENT FOCUS

A LIFE IN SONG: QUINCY JONES LIVE IN CONCERT To celebrate his 85th birthday, the musical icon took over London’s O2 Arena for one night, opening the doors to thousands of fans to witness his famed tracks reimagined by a full orchestra. A handful of A-list performers turned up to lend their voices for the evening of celebration. TPi was invited to meet LD Ben M Rogers, who outlined his visual goals for the performance.

Quincy Jones’ musical repertoire is truly incredible. The impact of his farreaching work has found critical acclaim in cinema, theatre and popular music. Jones has won a Grammy, Tony, Oscar and Emmy for his efforts.

With the famed producer turning 85 this year, London was ready to roll out the red carpet. Hosted by Nic Harcourt, the audience was treated to an evening with Jones as he told stories from his illustrious career about collaborating with the likes of Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg and Frank Sinatra. In between chats, the O2 enjoyed Jones’ back catalogue reimagined live by the Senbla Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley. A selection of industry heavyweights, including Mark Ronson, Paul Weller and Mick Hucknall, joined the orchestral party.

Ollie Rosenblatt, Founder of promoter Senbla, told TPi how this historic show came about. “It was actually us who originally approached Quincy’s management,” began Rosenblatt. I just so happened that Jones and his management were already in Europe during the summer so they agreed to go ahead with the show. “We had to get our skates on pretty quickly,” reminisced Rosenblatt. “We didn’t have much time to create or sell tickets for the show but that made us focus more, think clearer and more efficiently about what we want to achieve and how to do it.”

Ben M Rogers was brought in as the show’s Lighting Designer with PRG XL Video providing all the fixtures needed for the performance. 8 weeks before doors opened the LD got to work to ensure the stage set was up to scratch for this very special birthday celebration.

Senbla has a great deal of experience in this style of show although, according to Rogers, the venues are usually not as vast as the O2. “Most of the Senbla shows of this nature have been in concert halls, so I was keen to try and capture the warmth and intimacy of those spaces within the cavern of the O2,” he began. Rosenblatt agreed: “The scale was much larger as we were in an arena and had to create everything from scratch. From the music and design to booking the orchestra and guests and to selling the tickets. Ben did a brilliant job bringing it to life and creating fantastic visual elements, getting the feeling spot on.”

Unlike other orchestral shows, Rogers explained, this particular performance had 3 areas of interest. First was the large orchestra with an expanded rhythm section. Then stage right there was an interview area, where Jones and Harcourt sat throughout the evening. Finally there was a space for the guest artists to perform just in front of conductor Jules Buckley. Understandably all 3 of these elements largely dictated the stage 16

QUINCY JONES

First page: Quincy Jones sharing his 85th Birthday with the O2 Arena; Mark Ronson lending his guitar skill for the evening. Below: LD for the event, Ben M Rogers.

composition. “I added a small triangular stage extension on centre to give the guest artists some playing space,” said Rogers. “We put in red scenic drapes to frame the space as well as some conventional fresnels on grip stands and a large ‘Q’ letter to enhance the raised interview area.” The giant letter came courtesy of The Curious Collection.

With the limited stage space and reduced production time, Rogers opted to move away from followspots, instead creating balanced keylit areas for the principal fixtures. “The packed stage meant some quite acute angles were needed to frame the artists but exclude the orchestra,” said Rogers. “I structured the mid stage truss with an arrangement of ladder drops which allowed me to layer the lighting rig vertically.” The red curtains and ground row fixtures allowed him to compose a rich and layered image with the limited amount of space.

The front top and side light for the centre stage artist area was the new Prolights RA3000. The LD had demoed the product previously, although this was the first time adding it to a show rig. “The output is immense with an excellent zoom range,” enthused Rogers, adding, “Most critically for me are the optics which allow for precise control of the blend of gobos, iris and framing shutters. Not only that but the fixture has even colour mixing using the CMY and CTO flags.” Through the show, Rogers was able to utilise the great zoom and framing shutters to cut spill of the orchestra and keep a tight and tidy focus.

Adding more texture and animation to the rig where 5 Claypaky B-EYE K20’s overhead and a row of the new Chauvet Professional Pyxis along the front of the stage. The rig was rounded out with 8 PRG Best Boy Wash’s, 12 HP Spot’s and 10 Icon Edge’s fixtures which offered some key light to the interview area, backlight orchestra wash and beam effects. Also present on Rogers’ rider were Hazebase Hazers and Martin by Harman Jem AF-1 fans.

For control Rogers relied on his old favorite, the MA Lighting grandMA2. “I’ve been pretty much locked into the MA platform for the last 10 years,” stated the LD. “I still rock out the grandMA1 sometimes and the dot2 has been great on some of my install projects, but for this show - and pretty much every live gig I do - the grandMA2 remains a robust and powerful system to trust!” As many of the musical arrangements were only agreed upon on the

preceding day, time coding and other such methods were always going to be out of the question. Instead he opted to build a theatrical stack adding in some effects and stabs during the performance. “I took a deep breath and went for it,” joked Rogers. He also admitted he was very conscious the show was made up of music from several different decades. “In essence the musical flow of the show was structured across several decades so there was a really nice musical evolution which I tried to follow with the lighting character,” he mused. “We began with jazz and swing and evolved to classic rock and pop with the extended tribute to Rodney ‘Rod’ Templeton and Michael Jackson in the second half.”

PRG XL Video supplied the fixtures, control and rigging for the production. “I’ve had excellent support from Jon Cadbury and the team at PRG for many years and this gig was no exception,” Rogers recalled. “As the O2’s in-house rigging team, they made it easy to co-ordinate this one-off event. The prep facility at Longbridge allowed our Production Electrician, Stephen Andrews, and the lighting team of Hamzah Wahbi, James Marks and Jamie Paul - the chance to get it all ready as we loaded in that morning with sound checks and production rehearsals in the afternoon.”

Despite the tight time schedule, the production was able to bring the magic of Jones’ music to the O2 Arena. “Quincy Jones is a musician of the highest order,” concluded Rogers. “His work has resonated through generations and long may it do so. There is perhaps nothing more electrifying for me than sitting in the middle of an enraptured crowd sharing an experience like this one. It was a pleasure to shine a little light on!” As for Senbla, Rosenblatt is happy to report he is still “buzzing from it”. He elaborated. “We’ve had nothing but brilliant feedback from the audience, guest artists and people in the industry so I’m chuffed. I think we genuinely achieved a piece live music history as something like this has never been done before with Quincy Jones. I feel we created and captured something very special.”

TPi Photos: Senbla www.quincyjones.com www.prg.com/uk/en 18

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01/08/18 16:05

EVENT FOCUS

THE LUNA CINEMA Well, it turned out that football didn’t actually want to come home, but that didn’t stop The Luna Cinema from creating a 4,000-capacity open air movie theatre to show it in.

Not content with just celebrating its 10th birthday by showing over 175 evening screenings of classic and recently released films, in various settings, outdoor cinema specialist The Luna Cinema expanded the brand’s repertoire with The Luna Beach Cinema. The Luna Beach Cinema kept the company’s tradition of showing films and live sports events in unheard of places by taking up a residency on Brighton Beach. Creating a 4,000 capacity open air movie theatre right by the sea, just in time for the FIFA World Cup and unbelievable weather, is no easy task. Which is why The Luna Cinema had help from NEXO and A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET).

Having been an enthusiastic user of NEXO audio systems since 2015, purchasing a sizeable inventory of GEO M6 compact line arrays for use with the screens that tour some of the most historic and picturesque venues in the UK, The Luna Cinema team knew what to expect from NEXO. Luna’s Technical Director, Jamie Plummer, and Production Manager, Tom Barton, chose NEXO’s new GEO M10 mid-size array system, with its dedicated subbass cabinets, specifically to service the 6 week Luna Beach Cinema event.

“We’ve had a very successful run with NEXO and their line arrays,” explained Barton, “So we wanted to stay with the brand. Jamie and I took a trip to NEXO HQ in Paris, where it was really helpful to hear the new M10 20

THE LUNA CINEMA

side-by-side with the GEO M6, which we know so well. Adding the larger line array models gives breadth and depth to our inventory, and they are the perfect complement to our new highest-definition LED video screen.”

The Luna Cinema is one of the first touring users in the UK to embrace NEXO’s new NXAMP4x2 controller-amplifier, with its touchscreen control panel. “The touchscreen is a great addition. There were 3 NXAMP4x2’s

running the M10 system. We have control of everything on the touchscreen and its operation is fully intuitive.” Luna’s stock of amplifiers, racked and patched by Orbital Sound, are fully compatible with both GEO M10 and M6 sound systems.

“The GEO M10 is particularly versatile, allowing us the choice of groundstacking or flying systems,” continued Barton. “Flexibility is a

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THE LUNA CINEMA

priority for us. Especially how the system travels and packs down. Setup smaller 5m x 3m screen, along with the associated Novastar control boxes, of M10 is so easy that we can carry 6 modules in a flightcase, and just pick data and power cabling, mounting hardware and flightcases, plus the them up onto the line array towers. This is important as we rarely have screen support and truss. much time to soundcheck - anything that saves us time is a bonus. Many of Plummer commented: “We strive to provide our customers with a truly our sites are noise-sensitive, and the GEO M10, with its cardioid subs, allows cinema-quality experience, and with our state-of-the-art new OmegaPIX us to manage the LF and avoid complaints from the neighbours.”

LED screen, in our opinion we’ve just raised the performance bar for open With the audio sorted, Plummer and Barton needed a screen that could air screenings. As well as enabling us to host events during the day, the handle being used in the daytime. The company previously utilisied a video screen’s image quality is fantastic. It’s bright enough to cope with daylight, solution comprising of HD projectors and a pop-up screen, movies could has IP65 protection, and is designed for quick and easy assembly. We’re only be shown after dusk to ensure sufficient image quality in ambient really glad that we came to A.C. for a video solution - it will definitely light. However, with the expanansion into hosting enhance the cinematic experience we can offer screenings throughout the day, The Luna Cinema our customers.” decided it was time to invest in a high brightness Although England couldn’t find a winning outdoor LED video wall. combination, the OmegaPIX LED and GEO M10 When the company approached AC-ET for along with the scenic views and scorching a solution, Stuart Burdett, Sales Manager for weather created a perfect storm for the its specialist video division recommended the crowds who visited The Luna Beach Cinema.

ProLights OmegaPIX range.

The ProLights screen, bracketed by GEO M10 Specifically designed for temporary loudspeaker arrays, made its debut in Kensington “That touchscreen is a great outdoor daytime events, the range features an Palace Gardens, relaying the coverage of the IP65 version in the popular 3.9mm pitch and Royal Wedding to the London crowds. After 6 addition. There are three utilises next generation NovaStar A8 graphics weeks of film, football and the Wimbledon tennis NXAMP4x2s running the M10 receiving cards combined with 18 bit+ ClearView championships on Brighton Beach, it takes to the technology to deliver truly stunning picture road for a tour around the UK called Luna Kids, system; we have control of quality even in bright daylight conditions. showing 3 films a day in outdoor venues. everything on the touchscreen The OmegaPIX video system supplied by TPi AC-ET features 240 panels to create a screen that Photos: AC-ET and its operation is fully is 10m wide x 6m high, with a high resolution of www.thelunacinema.com intuitive.”

3072 pixels wide x 1280 pixels high. In addition, www.nexo-sa.com a further 60 panels were supplied to create a www.ac-et.com Tom Barton, Production Manager 22

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16/08/2018 15:37:39

EVENT FOCUS

GLASSJAW - LIVE IN BRIXTON Post-hardcore luminaries of the early 2000’s, Glassjaw delighted fans last year by returning with their new album Material Control - their first in 15 years. Armed with their new record, the band joined forces with Lighting Designer, Hayden Borgars, and hit the UK. TPi’s Stew Hume reports…

It’s an exciting time to be a post-hardcore fan, with several bands ending their extended hiatuses. Whether you’re a fan of At The Drive In, Thursday or Refused, there seems to be a renewed appetite for the genre in a live setting. One of the latest to re-join the ranks is Long Island’s Glassjaw. To the surprise of fans, the band dropped their new album, Material Control, in late 2017 - their first in 15 years. As ever, with a new release the question of live dates was inevitable.

This summer the band played 2 back-to-back shows in the UK with headlining slots at ArcTanGent Festival on 17 August followed by a Brixton Academy show the following night. Lighting Designer, Hayden Borgars, was tasked with running the lighting for both performances. He only graduated Rose Bruford in 2016, but Borgars has already amassed an impressive resume of artists including The Amity Affliction, Me and That Man and The

Pineapple Thief. TPi caught up with the Borgars as he aided Post Malone’s crew, ahead of the singer’s Reading and Leeds appearances, to speak about his time with Glassjaw.

“I can’t really remember how the conversation with the Glassjaw camp started,” laughed Borgars. The LD had already worked with the band’s Tour Manager on other projects and he put his name in the running to operate the UK shows.

The LD knew he wanted to have a fixture able to produce a really tight beam which could also backlight the artists on stage. After a trip to this year’s ProLight+Sound, he found the solution. “I saw a demo of the Philips Vari-Lite VL800 BeamLine at Frankfurt and knew it was exactly what I was looking for!” enthused the LD. The VL800 is the first LED effects unit from the Philips Vari-Lite brand. Consisting of a linear strip of 12 RGBW emitters, 24

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GLASSJAW

Below: Lighting Designer, Hayden Borgars opted to use an Avolites Tiger Touch II for control.

the fixture is able to produce a flat sheer of lighting in a 3.5° beam. “Despite being made up of 12 cells it really looks like one source of light,” explained Borgars. In total, the LD deployed 9 of the fixtures across the front of the stage, which were supplied by Philips directly. “During the show I used the VL800’s to create several lineal shapes using the tight beams to backdrop the band.” The LD was also impressed with the fixture’s colour range. “The band specifically requested certain colours to be used throughout the set - namely blues and red along with the occasional pinks for the songs Pink Roses and Strange Hours. The VL800’s colours were far brighter than some of the other options I trialled.”

With the main workhorse in place, Glassjaw’s production put its faith in Ian Livie to provide the rest of the lighting rig for the Brixton date. In total, this consisted of 12 Elation Professional Platinum Beam 5R EXTREAMs and 12 Platinum Wash ZFX PROs. “The team from Ian Livie were really helpful,” complimented Borgars. “We were rolling into the Brixton show having played ArcTanGent the day before but when we rocked up to venue everything was in place and ready to go.”

For control, Borgars opted for an Avolites Tiger Touch II. “For virtually every show I work on, Avolites is my go-to platform,” said the LD, who owns a Titan Mobile, which he programs on at home. “I love how versatile the Avolites desks are and their customer support is unbeatable. If I ever have a question, I know the solution is just a phone call away.” Borgars explained how the Tiger Touch II was particularly useful for Glassjaw as the majority of the show was busked live. “It’s how I prefer to work rather than having a list of cue stacks,” explained Borgars. “It just means I can lock in with the

band and adapt if there is a change in timing or they throw in something different.”

Borgars recalled lighting Brixton Academy for the first time. “I’ll be the first to admit I was slightly nervous before these 2 shows,” said the designer, who said the experience was “a bit nerve-wracking”. He continued: “But as soon as the festival was over I was a bit more confident and I’m really happy with the looks I got in Brixton.” Borgars also had help from some of his seniors within the industry, who gave him advice throughout the process. “Tom Campbell (LD for Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes) and Jon Eddy (Deftones’ LD) were particularly helpful.

They’ve both done Brixton many times before and had a lot of advice to give,” recalled the LD. He concluded by telling TPi how much he enjoyed playing with the room to achieve the ultimate looks. “After the show I got compliments from the in-house photographers and production alike, commenting on the rig, especially the VL800’s. They certainly lived up to my expectations!”

Likewise, the UK fans were satisfied with their Glassjaw fix, and the band headed back stateside while Borgars went on with his busy festival season.

No rest for the wicked!

TPi Photos: The Fifth Estate www.glassjaw.merchdirect.com www.ianlivie.com www.haydenborgarslighting.co.uk www.vari-lite.com, www.avolites.com 26

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EVENT FOCUS

CPL INVESTS IN VIDEO TECHNOLOGY Technical production specialist, CPL has made a £2m investment that includes some of the latest LED, processing, media server and projection technology.

Video and AV lies in CPL’s DNA, and there has always been a commitment to ensuring that the company keeps ahead of this fast-paced and constantly changing world. This latest investment also points to CPL targeting larger and more ambitious events, and being competitive in more sectors, congruous with a general rise in music-based work.

A selection of premium brand products comprises the bulk of the investment including ROE LED screens, Brompton processing, disguise media servers, Riedel comms, Barco 4K laser projectors and Agile remote camera systems.

Complete with a stacking-and-rolling dolly system, each specially designed cart holds 16 panels of CB5 screen and is exceptionally quick to deploy and build on site, reducing overall production set-up / tear-down time as well as being a space saving solution for trucking and storage. The carts are designed to work in a ‘train’ formation whilst constructing large and wide screens.

“ROE has become an industry standard premium product and that was also important when considering the purchase” explained CPL’s Events Director, Lee Gruszeckyj. “We are confident that having this product available will open up new opportunities.”

It will also be added to CPL’s existing stock of ROE Black Onyx 3mm LED screen. In addition to the CB5, CPL purchased 200 ROE Strips, a creative indoor / outdoor LED batten-style product which can be used in conjunction with any other LED surface. The 1.2m long battens offer a 128 x 2-pixel resolution that can be fed via the same Brompton processors running signal to the CB5 and Black Onyx, so they can be mapped with matched video content and assist in creating a kinetic fluidity in LED based set designs.

ROE: CARBON LED SCREEN, AIR FRAME & ROE STRIP Over 200sqm of ROE CB5 indoor / outdoor product has been added to the CPL inventory. ROE is one of the top LED brands, renowned for its excellent engineering and innovative approach to product design. The 5mm pitch carbon-fibre CB5 panels measure 600 x 1200mm, are a slim 77mm thick, weigh just under 14kg each and are ideal for a wide range of applications.

CPL has also purchased ROE’s brand-new carbon fibre Air Frames - the first company in the UK to have these onboard. The product provides a convenient super lightweight all-in-one hanging, stacking and transportation solution designed for maximum efficiency in all production scenarios. The Air Frames can be flown or ground stacked without needing additional rigging elements making them hugely flexible.

The CB5 is IP-rated for outdoor use and designed and calculated to withstand high winds. It offers a 10-degree concave or convex curving variant for customised video wall designs, and the curving option applies to the frames as well as the hanging or stacking bars.

“It’s hugely versatile product and we are already benefitting from using it on several shows and events,” commented CPL’s Managing Director, Matthew Boyse.

BROMPTON PROCESSING Looking ahead, and to enable the processing of 4K signals and content, CPL has added Brompton SX40 processors to the rental inventory together with XD signal distribution boxes.

The SX40 rack sits at FOH with a cable running to stage which then splits the signal that is sent to all the screens, including the Brompton T1 processors which will be running the Pixel Strips.

CPL likes Brompton for many reasons, including the build quality, robustness and general reliability of the products - considered among the best in LED processing - but especially for the tech support and backup.

28

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Previous page: Richard Burrow, Simon Haydon, Matthew Boyse and Lee Gruszeckyj.

UK-based Brompton also offers “excellent and comprehensive training and product awareness so all can learn best working practices associated with the kit,” explained Gruszeckyj.

DISGUISE MEDIA SERVERS More power and flexibility for running video shows and spectaculars comes with this initial purchase comprising 2 4x4pro media servers, with more planned soon. disguise was chosen as one of the best and more trusted brands for managing video content.

The 4x4pro is designed for mapping content to the largest video surfaces and up to 16 x HD projectors or LED processors can be driven from a single server unit.

BARCO UDX-4K32 PROJECTORS Eight of these have joined the CPL rental fleet and being used for the Arcadia Spectacular event in London. CPL is again among the first handful of companies in the UK to have these exceptionally powerful 31000 Lumen 4K hi res machines. “4K projections are becoming increasingly common on tech specs, so we need to make sure we keep ahead of demand” said Gruszeckyj.

A fully sealed optical system is ideal for working in challenging environments like festivals and for concerts and tours where wind, dust, smoke, haze and other pollutants are rife, and it was all this and the general ruggedness and build quality that ticked all the CPL boxes.

CPL Director of Rental, Simon Haydon, and the team also liked the concept of product longevity through the evolutionary approach that Barco is taking to its projector architecture and product design.

A full range of lenses was purchased – no inconsiderable investment in its own right. CPL already owns several Barco E2 and S3 screen management and image processing systems, and they were keen on a product that would be fully integrated with the Barco Event Master image processing.

Haydon mentioned that the Barco support is also “excellent in every context” and they are another manufacturer running good, informative and fully certified training courses for technicians and end-users.

for use in yachting and marine sports environments, so they are incredibly tough and have more recently evolved into being a popular choice for all types of live events – which can present equally challenging scenarios!

Known for the truly industrial strength design and construction plus multiple rigging options - and with parts readily available from stock dispatched immediately from Agile - this was another purchase based on best quality products and the resulting creative solutions they will bring to CPL’s clients.

Both 4 and 8-way controllers were part of this first new investment in Agile, and as with all these purchases detailed here, more will follow!

CPL’s own manufacturing division RigTec fabricates a series of grips, brackets and clamps for Agile cameras - and a wide range of other industry standard devices - allowing plenty of additional adaptability for situations where cameras and projectors can be safely hung, flown, clamped, suspended or otherwise secured … for the deliverance of superlative shows.

With this commitment to some of the best and most innovative show presentation technologies on the market, it’s clear that CPL is taking its equipment inventory and operation to a whole new level!

TPi Photos: Louise Stickland www.cpl.tech

RIEDEL ‘BOLERO’ WIRELESS COMMS Speaking of the Riedel investment Gruszeckyj commented: “ Riedel’s product are simply the best available. Case and point is the fact they are the main choice for Formula 1, the most intensely demanding of sporting environments.” He went on to enthuse on the incredible ease of set up and use of this expandable, full roaming system with features such as Touch&Go beltpack registration.

In an industry first, the beltpack can be used as a walkie-talkie. Bolero also supports Bluetooth 4.1, allowing your Smartphone to be connected.

CPL has seen the demand for reliable and stable wireless comms skyrocket for all events in the last 12 months, so this purchase is in response to market demand and is the first of a planned phased investment with Riedel to be built on for the future.

AGILE REMOTE CAMERAS Also chosen for its rock-solid build, this investment includes several Agile ARC 360 hot head remote cameras. The products were originally developed 30

EVENT FOCUS

FESTIVAL & OUTDOOR EVENTS SHOW A complimentary event safety and security conference has been announced to take place at the Festival and Outdoor Events Show, 26 & 27 September 2018, Sandown Park, Esher, Surrey.

Just announced for this year’s Festival & Outdoor Events Show (Festout) is the SaFest Training Zone. Bringing high-level training to the show and providing a rare opportunity for visitors to attend a 2-day complimentary conference focussed on event safety and security.

Storm 4 Events is curating these 10 sessions exclusively for Festout, in association with the United Kingdom Crowd Management Association (UKCMA).

Visitors will gain tangible best practice advice within case study and theory teachings, all provided by leading industry academics and professionals.

SaFest seeks to establish sector competence and take the event safety agenda forward. Steve Blake, Founding Director of Storm 4 Events, commented: “The rate of incidents with event and crowd safety, the raised terrorism threat, the training deficit and the staffing insufficiency within the industry are all factors that are both reasonable and foreseeable to mitigate against when planning for today’s events environment.”

Session highlights include, Counter Terrorism Risk Management for

Events (Garry Jones, Storm 4 Events), Event Law, Legislation and Brexit (Eddy Grant, University of Derby), The Event Safety Landscape (Eric Stuart, Gentian Events), as well as Crowd Safety Training (Roy Wise, Square Metre), plus others.

Festout’s Event Director, Duncan Siegle, commented on SaFest: “When talking to the events industry, one area that continues to be flagged is the lack of accessible training and just how important it is, particularly in an age where rules and regulations are growing alongside heightened concerns for safety and security. With so many new outdoor events in the market each year, it is essential that organisers are up to date in these areas and a visit to Festout will give them access to these essential sessions they can really learn and develop from.”

Conference sessions don’t require booking in advance - visitors can just turn up on the day to as many, or as few sessions as they desire. Further details can be found on the website below.

TPi www.festivalandoutdoorshow.co.uk 32

THE KMS SERIES

»

All of a sudden I had accessible to me the widest dynamic range that I wouldn’t have expected on stage.

«

Photo: Elena Eggers

OLA ONABULÉ

Singer-songwriter and producer Ola Onabulé talks about the KMS series and stage microphone technique. Watch the videos here:

en-de.neumann.com/kms-videos

KMS_210x297_tpi_UK.indd 1

22.08.18 12:23

EVENT FOCUS

P!NK SWINGS INTO ACTION WITH SENNHEISER P!NK’s 2018 Beautiful Trauma World Tour kicked off in the US this Spring, playing at 38 arenas to more than 700,000 fans. It continued to Australia and New Zealand in July, with a further 42 shows, including a record-breaking 18-night run at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena. Throughtout the run, the singer once again combined incredible staging and aerial acrobatics with perfect vocal reproduction - courtesy of a Sennheiser Digital 6000 system.

Sennheiser has a long association with P!NK through her RF Coordinator and Monitor Engineer, Horst Hartmann. For her 2013 The Truth About Love Tour, he specified an integrated in-ear monitor and microphone system to help facilitate her technically and physically challenging show.

“As well as the challenge of the range of motion, we needed to provide P!NK with a headset that could also work in front of the PA because she is often flying above the audience and through the whole room,” Hartmann stated at the time. “Additionally, the microphone had to sound as good as a hand-held one and had to be extremely resistant to feedback, like a handheld would be.”

For the current tour, the microphone system has been updated with Sennheiser’s latest technology, including its Digital 6000 system, both handheld and bodypack, an improved custom microphone / in-ear combo, and wireless monitoring via Sennheiser’s 2000 Series. The Competence Centre Acoustics and Mechanics team from Sennheiser provided Hartmann with 6 new in-ear/headmic combos for the current tour. The design remained predominantly the same but now features an improved microphone connector on the ear-piece and new, mechanically refined Fischer Amps custom ear moulds. Jochen Fischer of Fischer Amps was delighted: “This is a fully hand-made design, and a very small series - to be able to offer a product like this in a joint project is just great.”

On the acoustics side, the Sennheiser team employed P!NK’s special IE 800 driver with its custom-modified frequency response and the microphone boom of a Sennheiser HSP 4 headset. The meticulous design allowed the headset to stay in place without the need for any additional fixings, whatever position P!NK finds herself in. Mechanical parts, such as the splitter, were 3D-printed, with connectors and cables manufactured especially. The splitter allowed P!NK to remove the second ear-piece, a requirement specified by her, so that she can use the head mic / in-ear as a single-sided version.

“We have been using the in-ear / mic combo since 2013 which was a huge step forwards for P!NK’s stage shows,” added her Monitor Engineer Jon Lewis. “And the new system is even better. Allowing her to consistently keep the quality of the ear mix during her energetic acrobatic stage shows.”

P!NK’s in-ear / head mic combo was custom-built by Sennheiser and Fischer Amps. Talking of the switch from Sennheiser’s analogue 2000 series to Digital 6000, Hartmann said: “I chose the Digital 6000 system simply because its digital and the signal can go straight into our consoles. Also, we have a lot of LED screens on the show which were causing issues with our RF system. Because Digital 6000 is intermodulation-free, it has been a big help in solving these issues for us. The fact that we can use the same MD 9235 capsule as we used before is a huge advantage. The whole system is easy to use, reliable, sounds good and it’s working well. We had a few little problems with the belt pack because the aerial was not in the right position for her costume and we can’t quite have it in the optimum position, so now we have a 4-antenna system picking her signal up and that is working well she’s not only on the main stage, but also on a B stage and in the air, so we need to have reception all over the arena.”

“I use a Digital 9000 system for Adele, so I know from that experience that there was an improvement in sound quality,” added FOH Engineer Dave Bracey. “There’s no difference in sound quality between the 9000 and 6000 Series, so I didn’t hesitate to use it for P!NK as well. “She spends the bulk of the show out in front of the PA, sometimes a long way out in front. Being

in front of the PA is always a challenge, but because of the way shows are designed these days it has become the norm. Luckily, she’s a good vocalist and it’s a good microphone, so it works.”

Wired Sennheiser mics are also heavily in use during the tour. The drumkit is miked with evolution e 901, e 902, e 904 and e 905 instrument microphones, the Leslie is picked up with three MK 4. For backing and guest vocals, additional SKM 6000 handheld transmitters and evolution e 935 microphones are used, while the atmosphere is captured by MKH 8050 super-cardioids, MKH 8060 short gun and MKH 8070 long gun microphones.

Pierre Morant, Artist Relations, Sennheiser, commented, “Sennheiser is always keen to develop long-term relationships. Collaborating with experienced engineers who work with world-class artists such as P!NK to develop custom solutions is extremely important to us. Working closely with Horst Hartmann to make his fantastic idea a reality brought about innovation. To be able to continue this process over a number of years has been invaluable. We love to push technical boundaries, Horst knows that we look forward to the next challenge...”

P!NK’s Beautiful Trauma World Tour continues in Australia and New Zealand until mid-September and then returns to the US in 2019.

TPi https://pinkspage.com https://en-uk.sennheiser.com 34

ROGER WATERS: US + THEM “To be part of the realisation of his vision over the course of almost the last 20 years has been a huge honour and privilege which will never be equalled.”

Richard Turner, Video Director

PRODUCTION PROFILE

The latest Roger Waters’ touring spectacular, Us + Them, - named after the 1973 Pink Floyd song that featured on The Dark Side of the Moon - played in arenas around the globe before evolving into a huge outdoor production, which came to monumental fruition in Italy.

TPi’s Kel Murray visits Rome’s Circo Massimo for the technically ambitious, theatrical gig, which was staged in monumentally historic grounds…

ROGER WATERS

There are few British rock legends who rose to fame in the ‘60s and continue to tour today, let alone with the magnitude and stamina of Roger Waters. Following an indoor arena tour which started in North America, the production then headed to Europe, via NZ And Australia, for the Lucca Summer Festival before upscaling further for Rome’s Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) and its audience of 65,000 fans. The outcome did not only deliver awe-inspiring technology in a juxtaposing event space, but was a team effort - delivered seamlessly in 36°C heat - led by a hearty dose of calmness and clarity.

TPi began the story with the man at the top, Chris Kansy. “I’ve been a Production Manager since the late ‘80s, but I actually wasn’t aspiring towards the role at all. I was working for Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, doing club shows as their guitar tech, when one day their Tour Manager said “Chris, you’re the Production Manager now. I told him that I didn’t know what that meant!

“Essentially, I became a Production Manager before I even knew what one was.” Ah, the 80s. Where rock ‘n’ roll dreams were plucked out of thin not using an Upstaging lighting system as the one we brought over from air and thrown at full speed into a guessing game of how to tour. “I worked America is designed to solely do the arena show, as oppose to an open-air with the support acts for Metallica and Mötley Crüe under Jake Berry, so I show. Therefore, we invited Neg Earth to come do the Italian shows before learnt how other people did the job, and kind of figured out my own style.” we go back into arenas with Upstaging, Neg Earth will also do all the open When production managing a gig of this size, and of this calibre - not to air shows in South America. It works out well because Neg Earth and mention in said testing weather conditions - experience must go a hell of Upstaging have always had a very friendly working-relationship. a long way? “Yes...” he continued. “Although, I’m still trying to figure things “My relationship with trucking goes way back; I’ve been using TransAm out!” he laughed. “Roger hadn’t toured in a long time when plans for a in Europe and Upstaging in North America since I was a kid!” he smiled. live production of The Dark Side of the Moon were talked about 12 years “We know how each other think, we know how each other work and we ago, and that’s when we began working together. It was supposed to be a know how to produce good work together. Trucking is the most expensive 6-week tour and ended up going for 2 years. He’s always in demand. thing we do in our industry, especially on large-scale projects like this; the “Andrew Zweck, Roger’s Tour Manager & Director, called me once again miles we put in is incredible, so you need to have someone on your side. and said ‘I think we’re going to tour The Wall next. A lot of the old crew came TransAm were the leaders in the sense that they said “our drivers are part together; (the late) Mark Fisher, Marc Brickman and a lot of the people who of the team, so our drivers will load the trucks as part of the crew”. And I originally worked on The Wall. We figured out how to produce it for touring love that train of thought; most trucking companies are doing that now, as the original was almost an installation - but with the help of our vendors and following TransAm’s lead. Bussing wise, in Europe, Beat The Street and and the genius of Mark Fisher from Stufish, we did 220 shows over 3 years now their other company, Phoenix Bussing, I’ve used for a long time too. I with that production.” don’t think there’s another company that competes with the quality of the Waters’ insatiable appetite for performing live continues, and before equipment they have, or the attitude of their drivers - being a bus driver can long, an appearance at Desert Trip was secured. Across 2 weekends in be a thankless job, but I see the true value of having a good bus driver on California, Waters joined the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Who, Paul your tour.”

McCartney, Bob Dylan and Neil Young for an unbelievable line up of The Roman show’s other suppliers include Airworks, Mobile Airships legendary acts. The festival also birthed the creative and technical designs and WIcreations, which has engineered and fabricated several key, bespoke for Us + Them as a full-scale touring production, which officially began on pieces, The Appointment Group and Rock-It Cargo and Premier Aviation.

21 May 2017 and will end on 9 Dec this year. Kansy continued: “We did the So, during the 30-year career that Kansy never intended to indulge in Desert Trip show in the fall and then went into rehearsals for Us + Them in when re-stringing Joan Jett’s guitar, is there much left to learn? “Every day the spring of 2017. We’ve now done 130-plus shows in just over a year,” he is a school day; I’m not just learning from experience, I’m learning from enthused. some of the young people in this industry too. The younger people coming Vendor wise, Kansy has used many of the same companies during the in are a whole new, stronger breed. I came up in this industry using rotary course of his career. “Roger is a very loyal person, and of course we have to dial phones and pencils and paper - that’s how I did my work. Now, young make sure all is fair, but our vendors like working with us and they know it’s production and stage managers all have CAD drawing skills and a different a big chunk of touring work when they get the call, so they each come to the frame of mind. I’m teaching them valuable communication skills though; table with a viable option. showing them the way to go into all productions, is to consider them as “Economics drive a tour, and if it’s not affordable, you can’t do it. For families who each have different ways of doing things, but need to remain example, Clair Global has worked with Roger forever with that ‘surround as a strong unit. The way I like to do things is to be very calm; you won’t hear sound’ ethos that he uses. I’ve personally done almost 500 shows with him, any yelling on our floor. and it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing, Clair deliver the “I like the fact there’s a great level of respect for each other and that surround sound he wants.” everybody helps each department; sound crew push wardrobe cases, The Italian shows are a litmus test for the upcoming South American video folks push PA boxes, lighting guys wrap steel. Everybody out here tour, which is an outdoor affair. “The arena shows we’ve done have meant is incredibly close and wants to be there for each other, and I do my best we’ve used surrounds, front end and control packages all from Clair. to breed that atmosphere and show that to the younger crew. I put my Here, this is a much, much bigger site and we weren’t touring with enough stopwatch away a long time ago on load-out. Do I pay attention to how surround sound, so we’ve also employed the services of Britannia Row long it’s taking? Of course, but we’re not out there rushing and trying to be Productions, now part of Clair, to do surround sound and delays with the fastest; I don’t think it’s safe and I don’t think it’s a healthy environment L-Acoustics. because it breeds discord. Seeing the next generation work so hard before Another long-serving vendor is Strictly FX. my eyes is very impressive, and I’m very proud of “They have always done our pyrotechnics and our team of here, running this amazing show.” now, our lasers. Lighting and video wise, some have come and gone here and there because of PRODUCTION DESIGN companies being bought out etc. Phil Mercer, Working closely with Waters is Creative Director who was originally with XL Video, and then PRG Sean Evans (known as Dead Skin Boy) and XL Video, has now started Universal Pixels, so that Production Designer, Jeremy Lloyd of Wonder relationship is still going strong no matter who he’s Works. Evans began working with Waters in 2005, “Animals is a dystopian view with. when the pair worked on the star’s Opera, Ira. He “We are using Upstaging for the first time began: “The Desert Trip set list was a chronological of society, and the lyrics are lighting wise, and the reasons for that were walk through Pink Floyd’s history. Not every song oddly relevant in today’s comfort and quality of equipment. Upstaging is from every album could be part of the set but it probably one of the best lighting companies in the felt very natural. Animals is a dystopian view of climate...” world, certainly in North America, and is right up society, and the lyrics are oddly relevant in today’s Sean Evans, Creative Director there with Neg Earth in Europe. For Rome, we’re climate. At the time we where building the show, 38

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it was election season, and Trump was gaining ground. It was outrageous!

How could he even be a consideration? One weekend I was at the studio mucking around with what to do visually for the song Pigs, and tried a quick pass at making the whole thing about Trump, and about what fake he is. We didn’t think he’d actually win…” he said, with a remittance of disbelief.

“Around the time of Desert Trip, Roger was confirming that he would do another arena tour, and was to call it Us + Them, based on the classic song title. The tour was to have a very strong political message, and given the success of the staging, and the relevance of the songs from Animals, we decided to figure out a way to pull off a large replica of Battersea Power Station indoors. For the indoor arena, chimneys above the roof wouldn’t work because of height restrictions. I have long liked the idea of doing stage designs that make arenas feel small and envelope the crowd, and I was after a design that would feature large amount of video screens too - why not fly them above the audience? Jeremy Lloyd and I kicked that around for a bunch of weeks, and came up with the design of 2 sets: 180ft of screens segmented into 20ft sections. We weren’t sure how to make it actually work, but TAIT sent through some new technology that they were working on called Rollios, and it was serendipitous - exactly what we needed.

“The indoor design was stunning, and the show works very well. But, the Rollios are basically large sails and therefore can’t be used outside.

So, we circled back to the design we had made for Desert Trip, and refined it further to have a simpler roof to feature the silhouette of the factory building when the chimneys were deployed. We had a few opportunities in Europe to test out the staging in Paris and twice in Italy. It was a bit hectic as we were shifting from an arena show to a stadium show without any rehearsals, but we pulled it off and the show in Rome was mind-blowing. I

was very pleased!” He added.

Evans furthered that the ideologies behind the strong political message were to essentially: “Stop killing each other and remember your humanity as the person over there is just like you. Resist tyrants!

Different portions of the show get into different specifics - for example, the dig at Trump in Pigs, needed to stay in. The ending of the song has a long instrumental section where we turn off most of the production, everything goes dark except some white lights on the band, and only damning quotes from Trump are visible on the screens. It hard to imagine that the President of the USA has actually said these things but we keep updating the quotes, because he keeps saying things that are more and more insane!

“There’s also a thread of a refugee woman and her child that runs throughout - it starts and end the show, and is featured in the song The Last Refugee - and Wait for Her, when it’s performed. This bit of film was one of the last to come together when we were building the show. I had seen a photo of an old man sitting in his destroyed house in Syria listening to an old turntable. It’s an incredible photo, I found it very moving. For the longest time, our rough cut of the show just had a long slow zoom out of this photo. When it came time to make it into material for our show, it needed to fit with the lyrics a bit more, so the man was changed into a woman with a child, and the story was elaborated - she was a dancer, she’s lost everything, is her child now dead?”

“Working with Roger is always positive, he likes big ideas, and I like that those ideas get to be ones with strong messaging. I also grew up as a fan of Pink Floyd, so the songs we are working with have been some of my favourites for my whole life. It’s quite an honour!”

Masterminding not only designing parts of the show, but ensuring it all 40

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fits together, from the intricacies of the delay towers to the huge set pieces, it’s akin to a very technical Lego set. But far prettier. Lloyd told TPi: “There’s quite a lot of bespoke stuff on this show, mainly from WIcreations, which makes things somewhat interesting.”

A pair of elegant 15.5m high circular PA towers grace the stage, complete with integral tracking systems on the onstage side for the rigging of 10 moving light fixtures, and on the downstage side for the sound cluster’s wind brace. The second WIcreations object is an industrial style stage roof - or ‘roofette’ as it’s known on the tour - comprising a set of imposing cantilevered steel beams which can be fitted with clear roof skins in case of rain. The third area in which WIcreations is involved is a truss and beam rigging system, devised to securely rig and retain in place the impressive 65m-wide upstage LED screen. WIcreations’s Account and Project Manager, Koen Peeters, oversaw these elements, after being approached by Lloyd.

Lloyd continued: “The PA masts had to be very compact for airfreighting. We wanted something quite slender in front of the LED screen because the whole design premise was to not have a standard 4 poster roof; we wanted the LED to stand proud, all on its own, in such a big outdoor space. Particularly for the Battersea Power Station gag - when 4 bespoke chimney pieces are revealed - all the motors live on the floor so that the cables and motors don’t ruin sightlines.

The set is built on some major scaffolding structures, primarily because once the show moves into South America to further iconic outdoor venues, a roof system would be far too expensive to freight and truck around. “It’s been done, but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense, certainly not for us, so the decision was made very early on in this design that everything should mount onto scaffolding. That in itself is a bit of a challenge because you get different scaffolding in every place you turn up in!

“WIcreations built the roofette similar in style to the Genesis one we did in 2007 - which has since been re-used for ELO. This time, we designed our own, slender roof. It has Martin by Harman MAC Auras mounted directly onto the roof without clamps - they’ve got a special little bracket with

internal wiring so you can actually plug the lamps directly into sockets on the roof, again allowing that feature to be both minimal and lightweight.

“For the video screen, because we want the top of the video to look like the top of the set, there isn’t any rigging above it. The LED screen header bars are on the back of the screen (as opposed to the usual position on top) and all the motors for the video live on the floor in dollies. The motor dollies are rolled in, attached to the structure at stage level, the motor hook is connected to a lifting cable that runs over a head block and the other end of the cable is connected to the LED header bar, once all connections are made the LED screen can be lifted.

“Our chimneys have been made by Airworks and Eventions. When they come out during the show, they’re 12m above the LED screen, and from the top of the chimney to the floor, there’s a height of around 28m.

They’re totally stable in the wind that’s kind of the point; you can’t have an inflatable piece blowing over and looking like a big of a bouncy castle, you need to have a solid-looking setting to create the iconic Battersea structure.

Airworks’ Matthew Whitehead took up the story. “We were approached

by Jeremy Lloyd who we had worked with on the London Olympics opening ceremony. We were originally going to make some replica inflatables from early pink Floyd tours, but the design soon changed to a recreation of the Animals cover. We had made the rising chimneys for the Olympic opening, so we were confident we could reproduce the effect. However, this time without any rigging was going to be a challenge. We used a mast system raised from below to push the chimneys up.

“The chimneys are inflatable, and made with a complex mechanism to ensure they raise elegantly, and do not give any hint of fabric. They took 4 months to design and build. It wouldn’t have been possible to pass the chimneys through the structure as easily if they had been made of hard scenic, a far larger and more complex scaffold would have been needed.

The fact that they were inflatable, saved not only on truck space - when deflated all the components of the chimneys fit in a single truck - but on installation time and weight within the structure as well. The engineering 42

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for the project was designed, developed and constructed together with Peter McKenzie, formerly at Eventions and now with his own company Qnetik. We built the London Chimneys together with him in 2012. The mechanism is complex, with an aluminium mast that pushes the chimneys up, frictions skis that smooth the fabric, variable speed blowers to ensure constant airflow as the chimneys rise, and multiple guide cables to combat the influence of side winds. Custom lighting units and smoke machines were also fitted in the top.”

Whitehead also mentioned that the team were very proud to be able to contribute to a show of this calibre: “Working for such a highly respected artist, and with such a talented team was a real honour, and the effect is one of the best shows we have worked on.”

Airworks also created a smaller chimney effects for the arena show, at approximately 40% scale. The outdoor design utilised 4 e-Gear 800kg 1m/s BVG-C1 winches, 4 e-Gear Custom Waterproof 9Kw drives with extra I/O for Pneumatic control with feedback, Fan Control and DMX, 2 e-Gear Distro-4 and an e-Gear 25 Operating Console.

Regardless of this show’s challenges, Lloyd, who worked on The Wall’s production design with Mark Fisher, is happy to be back in the Waters camp. “It’s so nice to come back to it again and it’s a very enjoyable thing to do for a job!” he exclaimed. “I enjoy working with the team here. It’s a really nice working relationship between Sean Evans and I, because we get on so well. I think when you’re around like-minded individuals and everyone has the common goal of trying to achieve such a tourable, cool-looking set, you find ways to make it all work,” concluded Lloyd.

LED WALL RIGGING Video and visuals have always been an essential part of Roger Waters’ live shows which are a cerebral mix of music, activism and thoughtprovoking juxtapositions. The 64.5m-wide x 12m-high video wall from

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ROGER WATERS

Universal Pixels is built in situ in 7.5m wide sections. Each section is guided into place via 2 vertical beams that are attached to the upstage scaffolding structure, which is locally supplied to the tour’s spec. The WIcreations team come to site and prepare the trussing supports with integrated diverter beams, then fly the completed truss in sections on top of the scaff wall.

Each screen section has several carrier wagons rolling along the vertical tracks, allowing the screen to be built from the ground up.

This methodology ensures that each 7.5m wide x 12m high section - and indeed the whole screen - is held firmly in place and wind-braced right from the start of the build process to the final moments of dismantling during the get out. This minimises the risk that the screen sections can rapidly turn into giant sails if the wind gets up.

WIcreations’ new proprietary MCA automation system controls the 18 motion hoists used for the LED screen rigging. There are another 15 moving light brackets attached along the top edge of the screen to which 15 more Robe BMFL Spots are attached, with 43 SGM Q7 blinders along the top and an additional 43 along the bottom of the LED surface.

“Everything in my peripheral vision belonged to UP. It was honestly amazing to know you’re a part of that.

“Some of the excitement on this tour is knowing that Chris has a very good crew out with him. For the show in Rome, we had 15 video crew, but generally speaking for the arena tour, it’s around 9, which tells you how much video gear we’ve got out on the outdoor shows.

“We were literally starting out with the company and working on this amazing tour. There was only 4 of us at Universal Pixels at the start of 2018, but we’re all very committed to the projects we undertake, and we were all fully behind this one. From a Production Manager’s POV, there was a massive risk in getting us in for the job, as we were replacing the biggest touring video company in the world. We were very aware of the responsibilities we had in front of us.

“There are some big benefits to having a small company do a job like this though; the kit we’ve bought is very small in comparison to some gear out there. The Italian shows have a huge screen, but it actually has a small footprint because infiLED is a very high resolution, yet compact product.

We first made an investment in it for Depeche Mode’s Global Spirit tour, and one of our aims when we set up the company was to get a large inventory of the same LED product because large format shows like this need to look perfect. We bought the 5mm infiLED tiles, which are very high res, maybe higher res than the tour initially wanted, but because we believe the products will stay current for longer, we thought this was the right product for the job - and it’s paid off.”

Head of Engineering at infiLED, Si Jones was on-site: “As always with our displays, and events of this nature, content is key. We were blown away by the whole production and the way the show captured the crowd. The music and atmosphere, supported by incredible content on such a significant display screen, just created an amazing all-round experience.”

UK CEO, David DaCosta, added: “Manufacturing, designing and putting on a spectacular show like a Roger Waters production is a collaboration with a number of organisations, without who it could never be a great success. At the end of the day, content is king, and it is the content that the audience gets to see so we were just thrilled to be a part of such a special project.”

Mercer continued: “We’ve put the screen with Brompton Technology processing, for the best quality picture possible. I think Brompton is the best there is out there. Obviously, everyone has their own ideas of

SCREEN SCENES Phil Mercer of video vendor Universal Pixels - or UP as they’re affectionately known, has been involved with Roger Waters’ live performances since The Dark Side of the Moon toured in 1996. Mercer was a part of the innovative touring video team at XL Video, and later PRG XL Video, before flying solo to form his own company. Something he says he had no experience in doing, but was an important move never the less, not just for himself, but for the industry as a whole, the recent spate of mergers has dramatically the reduced choice of video suppliers. Mercer took up the story: “I left PRG XL Video when Desert Trip was happening, and my last show was actually a Roger Waters gig, funnily enough. When it came to this production, the tour originated in North America and we weren’t involved at the very start, but were brought in at a later date to improve what had already been started.

Our first gig with the tour was in Auckland in January. I got the call from Chris and set about shipping 3 containers of LED out to the other side of the world. All the same batch, all the same quality,” he confirmed. The chosen LED tile? infiLED’s ER5. Not typical in concert touring, but perfect for the job.

“Then of course, there’s the huge projection element: the cameras, the PPU, and the interfacing. When it all came together, and I saw it for the first time, I was just stood there thinking “that’s all ours!” he laughed.

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what they like, but we try to do things differently and not have the same inventory as other companies. The Polecam camera system we’re using is an example of that; you get unique shots in a show that you wouldn’t get using any other camera. You’d never get a normal size camera in live music concert parameters the way they do. Their products are used in televised Premier League Football games, so it’s designed for really clever broadcast angles, but turns out that it’s a great tool for live music; I’ve no doubt our Polecam system will be in use a lot in the future.

“This whole job has been a massive vote of confidence in what we chose to do. We took a huge risk in starting up, because nothing is guaranteed; nothing comes on a plate in this industry, yet I think it shows that people do have faith in us, in the value of their relationship with our team, and that means we’ve started out on the right foot.”

Universal Pixels supplied an impressive 775sqm of InfiLED ER5 LED screen (configured as a single 64.5m/10,836 pixels wide x 12m/2,016 pixels high screen) with Brompton Technology SX40 Tessera Processing & 23 Touring Frames, 12 30k & 2 20k Panasonic Laser Projectors, a 5 Camera HD PPU and a 15-strong video crew to deliver what can only be described as the highest resolution touring LED screen to date – 21.8 million pixels. Pixel wrangling and motion tracking is courtesy of VYV Albion and Photon media servers.

VYV 5 years ago.

“Fortunately for us, Photon has evolved SLAC for projector calibration.

The way Photon SLAC (Structured Light Automated Calibration) works is by having a dedicated Optitrack IR camera per projector (or stack of projectors) That IR camera in greyscale mode sees the stepping stripes of structured light generated by the Photon calibration process as point reflections from retro-reflective tape on the strings of 4 VYV coppernic balls we hang, as part of the load in process, between each projector merge zone between roller screen. Each ball is a custom-made ping pong ball size sphere of translucent plastic containing a number of IR LED’s. Each sphere emitting its own programmed unique numerical ID code at up to 240 FPS. The fact we have 2 parallel lines of screens 2.5m apart down the length of the arena means we have an almost perfect constellation of 18 hanging strings to calibrate the IR cameras in the first place. “’Constellation’ is a key word here, as it alludes to the celestial sphere. When we look at the starry sky we are effectively seeing a “flat” representation of a MASSIVELY 3d universe. One point of a constellation could be a neighbouring star; another could be a galaxy forming out of the big bang an unimaginable distance away. The 2d representation of the 3d coppernic constellation from each camera or projectors PointOfView is how Photons math works out where and what shape each camera or projector pyramid is.

“The tracking cameras which cover the stage for performer tracking [Waters has infrared LEDs embedded in his IEMs] are the start point of the REALLY clever maths worked out by VYV’s research fellow in multidimensional maths Dr Gilles-Philippe Paille. By using the known ID’s of 6 measured coppernic points embedded in the stage the IR camera calibration can start work. An iterative algorithm compares the second image of the coppernics from each camera (that can see all 6 known points) to the known 3d model of those points within Photon to define each of those camera pyramids. At that point any unknown target ID is also calculated and positioned within the 3d scene so that cameras that can’t see all 6 known points can also join in the party. That process works down the room until all 50 or so camera pyramids are calibrated perfectly in the 3d scene. In less than a minute.

“SLAC then means we can have those 21 arena projectors all volumetrically calibrated generally within 40 minutes. “Volumetrically” is the key difference with the VYV way, and fundamentally different to the traditional preset focus world. It means that Photons multidimensional maths not only works out the 6 DOF [the 6 DegreesOfFreedom are XYZ position and XYZ rotation] position of the projector lens, it also takes into account other parameters such as aspect ratio, lens shift and distortion etc to build a very accurate model of the lens pyramid shape as well as its position in space. This means that as long as we know where an object is within that cone and its shape we can hit with it pixel accuracy. Even if it’s

DIRECTING THE MASTERPIECE “The Italian shows reflect a gigantic cinema scope look throughout the gig, and Roger loves a big, impactful design, so that’s what we set about doing.

How do you jazz up such a mammoth video screen? Well, by turning the set into Battersea Power Station, of course!” joked Richard Turner of Lucky Frog, Us + Them Video Director. “We regard the chimneys and the rig as a whole canvas yet Circus Maximus is the entire space we’re able to use, such as allowing laser beams for the prism gag which expands from the stage to become a part of the set above the audience’s heads. Sean Evans’ creative design is incredible, and Jeremy Lloyd has led the technical side in such a clever way. It’s pretty spectacular. As a Video Director, working with this amount of screen is unparalleled,” Turner mused.

“A significant element of the Rome show was the projection mapping onto the 4 chimney breasts. Turner continued: “We are already carrying enough VYV technology to deal with the arena show, with its 21 projectors covering 17 roller screens and 4 indoor chimneys, as well as providing performer (and pig!) tracking information to lighting. That all has to be repurposed for the outdoor projection task, changing lenses and angles of all cameras and projectors. Not an insignificant task, but one seamlessly managed by Lucky Frogs’ Photon touring specialist Ellie Clement not once but several times (back and forth from arena mode) as the schedule demanded. To rig and align 14 projectors onto multiple 3d objects in a single overnight period is a proposal I would have laughed at until meeting 48

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moving, like the roller screens that invariably flap around in the air handling breeze of most modern arenas. We have coppernics at either end of the bottom pipes to facilitate this tracking. It’s another bit of magic that no-one would notice until it’s not happening, the fact that the image ‘sticks’ to the screen surface as it moves.

“We then needed to apply that to the outdoor show. Big problem, no roof to hang our constellation from. For this, we employed another unique Photon feature – RealTime calibration and invent another calibration process. With Photon, once the projector calibration camera and projector are calibrated together those pyramids are locked together. So, as long as the camera lens, projector lens and projector optical block all maintain exactly the same relationship and we know where the camera pyramid is we also know where the projector pyramid is, and therefore can hit with projected UV mapped content any known object within that pyramid incredibly accurately. We didn’t have a technology problem, it was an “applying technology to reality” problem. So we turned, with just enough time, to our favourite “reality mongerer”.

Peter McKenzie at Qnetik to help us invent some solutions. Between us we came up with weatherproof ‘steam punk’ housings for each projector (to obviate the need for giant projector towers), lens clamps

to attach optitrack cameras to projector lenses and last but not least ‘CarbonCubicConstructions. The CCC’s are each effectively 3 2m a side cubes made of carbon fibre tubes joined together to give an extremely rigid (to cope with wind oudoors) constellation on either side of the stage under the LED. Each corner has a known coppernic ball. Big rigid known volumes that fit into a 2m x 0.75 x 0.5m roadcase.

“The night before we point each projector a CCC, calibrate, then use the super smooth pan and tilt mechanism on the housing to point at where the chimney is going to be. There are also - inevitably! - coppernics buried in each chimney to tell us where they are, so as they rise spectacularly at the start of the second half the UV mapped content sticks to the chimneys.

Because we’re hitting each chimney from separate projection positions we achieve greater than 180-degree coverage so all the audience sees is projected upon.

“The last 2 weeks of this first Europe leg were certainly the hardest period of my life. You can’t not have scary moments when you’re putting this much technology together!” He noted. “But it all worked and that’s down to everybody’s precise pre-planning and teamwork. It’s a very complex matter!” he confirmed.

“Would it be possible to calibrate in other ways? I don’t know… but I

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certainly wouldn’t like to try it without Photon! At our BST show in Hyde Park we had the additional problem of the foliage around and above the stage that is the festival design, which meant the ‘onstage’ projectors had to go on the roof upstage of the foliage pointing up at crazy angles. There was some doubt about being to get all the targets in the appropriate place (we ended up craning the CCC’s onto the top of the LED between the chimneys), so we thought we’d better try a manual calibration, which involve manually positioning the projector within the Photon 3D scene and fiddling the 6 DOF and lens shift etc. At those angles almost impossible from FOH so the team rigged robocams from projectors positions so we could see from the projector POV. After 2 hours the next night of trying I gave up with the roof projectors, maybe 6 hours a projector would do it. The angles were so steep tiny adjustments made such a massive difference, and those adjustments fought each other. Possible with much longer throws, but i’m sure we would run out of time with a single night of darkness.”

In total, there are 11 VYV media servers: 4 off 8 output servers driving projection system, one doing the LED and then the appropriate backups and Albion controllers arranged as a Projection group and LED group to split load and content storage. The show is almost entirely programmed, with pretty much every cut of every camera heading in an evolving

direction. How does the VD sum up the most challenging role of his career to date? “Fucking great - it’s as simple as that. If you work in projection and video, who on earth could ever ask for more? This rig is like a great big toy… every day I feel as though Roger has let us play with his huge train set. To be part of the realisation of his vision over the course of almost the last 20 years has been a huge honour and privilege which will never be equalled.”

LIGHTING “It’s a lot of fun working with Roger and Sean; this creative camp is obviously a fantastic experience to be a part of,” began LD, Pryderi Baskerville. “You could say Roger pretty much invented this idea of the rock concert theatre spectacle so it’s extremely exciting to be involved with such an artist, and this team.

“When you’re looking at the design for the Italian shows, it’s an evolution of what we’d been touring from our arena run. From a design point of view, it’s extremely collaborative - we all work together very closely in the initial impetus; with the creative drive coming from Roger and Sean.

Roger is so passionate about what he does, and that extends to the staging of his music and the way he wants to convey his message to his audience.

“Obviously, the biggest thing we’re dealing with is the screen; it’s the one

Technical design from concept to reality

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defining message that gives you effectively the primary visual stimulus, and the content is amazing too. The content Sean and Roger have created really is breath-taking.

“In order to complement this, the lighting is theatrical, for want of a better word. Obviously, my first point is to make sure everyone is lit, but the lighting is there to enhance, support, and respond to the content - and the narrative - as a whole. And providing a big impact when required.”

On stage, there are 7 identical cantilevered heavy-duty steel roof beams which mark out the 18m-wide x 12m deep stage space which constitutes the band performance area, all keeping with the industrial vibe of the overall stage design. Variants on this theme have been a characteristic of Roger Waters’ live looks over the years. Each of the roof beams feature 8 integral Martin by Harman MAC Aura LED washes and all the cabling required which is enclosed in the beams. The Auras plug in with a short 25cm tail maintaining the tidy, high-quality finish prevalent throughout the whole stage area.

The roof beams are pinned to a sub-frame structure below stage that hold them rigid and rock solidly in place. On the end of each roof arm is an SGM Q7 LED strobe. Fixture wise, the entire lighting rig consists primarily of Robe BMFL WashBeams, SGM Q7’s and Martin by Harman MAC Aura XBs, and is supplemented by GLP impression X4 Bar 20’s and TMB Solaris Flare Q+. At Circo Massimo, 15 BMFL WashBeams were placed along the top of the LED wall and mounted on custom fabricated brackets.

A further 20 BMFL WashBeams (10 SL, 10 SR) were mounted on a custom fabricated track in both PA Masts. Known affectionately as the aforementioned on stage ‘Tormentors.’ A total of 20 BMFL WashBeams (10 SL, 10 SR) are placed in Tyler GT Truss on the offstage side of the LED Wall – the offstage Tormentors. The Robe preference doesn’t stop there: 22 BMFL WashBeams are on the

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Michael Hartle, Laser Tech; Production Manager, Chris Kansy; Lighitng Designer, Pryderi Baskerille; Shawn Jacobs, Infialtables Guru; Production Designer, Jeremy Lloyd; Video Director, Richard Turner.

upstage floor, with 8 BMFL WashBeams (4 per side) on the side bunkers.

Another 8 BMFL WashBeams are used at FOH as followspots and for key band lighting, and finally in the Robe arsenal, 4 BMFL WashBeams at FOH - floor mounted - to light the tethered pig (more of this later!) as it’s walked around the stadium floor and into the crowd.

There is a total of 56 MAC Aura XBs in the bespoke roof structure; 7 spans that run downstage to upstage with 8 fixtures in each. There is an SGM Q7 mounted at the end of each roof span - 7 in total, and 85 Q7’s mounted on the LED wall - 43 on top, 42 on the bottom edge.

A further 52 SGM Q7’s are distributed onto the FOH and PA delay towers, each 0.5m diameter, and matt black coated round steel tubes, for a fully streamlined and modern aesthetic. The PA rigging cradles holding the slimline Clair Global line arrays which are rigged to the towers via an i-beam hoist system. The hoists are at the base of the tower and the arrays are built and raised up until complete, then an adjustable stabilising arm is attached to a trolley riding up the mast while the whole assembly is flown up to trim height.

Another 1-tonne hoist is attached to the base of the tower with its steel travelling up the offstage side of the mast, hoisting a stack of 10 Robe BMFL moving lights up along the integrated PA mast track. Individual transparent rain shields offer clean-looking and effective weather protection for the moving lights. When in position, these form a perfect perpendicular line of downstage lights each side. There is also 17 GLP X4 Bar 20’s deployed onto the downstage edge of the stage.

Then, 10 Solaris Flare Q+ are situated behind the backline. In addition, the Italian shows require some practical elements: 16 chimney warning beacons (red LEDs), with 4 placed per chimney; 4 custom RGBW LED fixtures - 1 per chimney - to accent the smoke; 4 Viper smoke machines - 1 per chimney; 4 MDG The One machines for atmospheric Haze; 2 Viper NT smoke machines. Additionally, there are also 12 rotating beacons on the downstage edge for the Battersea Powerstation deployment.

Baskerville continued: “Despite the amount of gear we have up there, it’s a really clean looking show. A great deal of thought has been given to integrating the lighting system with the screen and set elements, and to make it as unobtrusive as possible.

The reason I chose the BMFL Washbeam as my main fixture is that I find them brighter than the BMFL Spot (which is used on the arena show), really punchy, their colour temperature is great - capable of delivering both a

hard-edged beam and a wash, so they’re really good for multi-use. The Q7’s can be used as strobes and blinders.

Baskerville served as the Lighting Director as well as the lighting programmer, operating the show each night. “’I’m running the show too, probably because I’m a control freak!” he joked. “I’ve used several consoles over the course of my career but for me, the MA Lighting grandMA2 is the most stable console for this type of show and for the nature of work I’m doing. If you’re gardening, you don’t use a spade for everything, but it’s whatever makes you feel confident in the job, and for me, that’s MA. If you get to know a console well enough, your muscle memory is so good that you’re able to stop thinking about what you’re physically doing and able to think about what you’re trying to achieve instead.” Baskerville’s MA2 is running software version 3.3.4.3.

SPECIAL EFFECTS With the video and lighting in check, the show can really come into its own with some unique special effects. Creative Director Sean Evans added: “The ‘Eclipse’ - the laser pyramid that forms towards the end of the show. Again, first seen as Desert Trip. I wanted to end the show with something that was three-fold: an ecstatic, positive moment for the crowd that was based in Floyd’s iconography, something that people would want to photograph, and something that could be seen for miles. The crowd wasn’t expecting a 50ft tall pyramid to materialise over their heads and it looked great in Rome.”

The gag involved a variety of lasers on the downstage edge of the stage and in the audience where the prism could take shape. Production Designer Jeremy Lloyd added: “Of course, we have to stop the beams just shooting off into the sky from the top of the prism, so we’ve got 4 masts, 2 up-stage behind the LED screen and 2 FOH on the delay towers, connected to the masts are small 6.5mm steel wire ropes these create an ‘X’ in the centre of which is a square metal plate suspended over the audience which is the beam blocker for the lasers. That’s another WIcreations bespoke piece. It’s one of those things that I think will have the audience questioning throughout the show, until right at the end. It’s a really simple effect but it’s very creative effective, it’s a nice moment to watch.”

The lasers and special effects were supplied by Strictly FX. The plethora of gear included the array of laser systems on the whole tour, ranging from 6W through 24W, with the smaller wattage lasers being replaced for the 54

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ROGER WATERS

outdoor shows for more powerful systems when the atmosphere can’t be controlled as accurately. The company also provided an Estop and control system that allowed the various ops to comfortably handle the physically spread out show.

Michael Hartle, Laser Technician, told TPi: “The Dark Side of the Moon cover appears for the song eclipse and the laser pyramid covers 80ft by 80ft, which is pretty amazing to watch unfold.” Hartle, who is running the gag using Pangolin Beyond software, continued: “Roger is such a legend. For me, it’s like being working for one of my heroes. To be part of such iconic imagery in a live show is crazy. I was born in 1972 and The Dark Side of the Moon came out that year and became one of biggest selling albums of all time, and become a favourite of mine. To be here, creating this effect, is something I’m proud to be a part of.”

Lloyd also concluded by saying pulling off the prism gag in Italy was a mean feat. “Italy is so strict when it comes to event like this. It’s probably one of the most challenging places in Europe to do a show, from a health and safety legislation point of view. We have to ensure everything we build is fully engineered, that we’ve got all the documentation and engineering analysis and that our safety people have been in to collate the information on laser. We’re using The Event Safety Shop (TESS) for this, and they deal with all the different departments for our local promoter who in turn deals with the relevant authorities.”

Elsewhere in the special effects realm of Us + them, Strictly FX deployed mines and comets in height ranges of 200ft – 275ft. FireOne was used for control. Strictly also added to the show’s haze effects, utilising 6 Haze Base Tours and 4 Viper Foggers. Pyrotechnic Shooter, Reid Nofsinger, is manning the explosives. “Everything I deal with is white because that’s how Roger likes it; it looks striking and a bit unusual for pyro. It all happens in the last

12 seconds of this show so it’s like the icing on the cake.”

The final shot of the show has 60, 275ft white comets with a pixie dust tail shooting up into the sky, creating quite a scene. Ending up 30m in the air, the special effects moment is certainly an engaging part of the show.

“When you’re told ‘just go crazy’ and you’re in charge of pyro, it’s a pretty good feeling!’ he laughed.

Us + Them also contains some iconic physical special effects. Enter Shawn Jacobs, Inflatables Technician, of Mobile Airships AKA The Blimp Guys. He’s the man behind the iconic flying pig, and the other inflatable gags throughout the show. He said: “I began touring with Roger in 2006. I was flying around a little remote controlled blimp for hockey and basketball games just a part time job. Roger Waters bought one of the ‘blimps’ and needed someone to go on tour. That was my introduction to touring! In a dark twist, the inflatable pig gets torn apart by the audience once it’s set out into the wild during the show. “Sean Evans designed one side of the pig, but the other side is blank because depending on what country we’re in, I spray paint it whatever says ‘Stay Human’ in the local language.”

There was also a chrome orb led by Jacobs, manufactured by Netherlandsbased Airworks. Measuring in at 5m in diameter.

SURROUND SOUND AUDIO Veteran FOH Engineer, Jon Lemon, had a somewhat unexpected entrance to the tour. “I’d just come back from doing some promo shows with Lana Del Rey in America and the UK, and I’d literally been back home in Australia for less than 24 hours. I think it was 18 in fact, when my phone goes off in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t usually pick up, but I saw that it was Shaun Clair. The engineer they had out, Trip Khalaf, had to leave, and had asked for me to take over. I said sure, when do you want me to start… he

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FOH Engineer, Jon Lemon with his DiGiCo SD5.

said can you fly tonight. I needed to do my laundry first, so I said I’ll do it, but I’ll have to fly tomorrow! It was pretty easy to slot in as I’d worked with Roger and many of the production crew before and everyone was so supportive, but it wasn’t easy missing all the rehearsals trying to pull everything together quickly!” he noted.

“Matt Napier, on monitors, had a DiGiCo SD7 with him, and as I use DiGiCo too, I could start working out exactly what was going on from his show sessions and the recorded shows. I jumped in at the deep end about 6 shows in. I actually started out for the first two months of the tour using Trip’s gear, which was 2 old Midas XL4 consoles and a Yamaha PM5D. When we had a 3-week break in the schedule, I said I thought I could make it better if I swapped out both my consoles and the PA we were using. Trip always likes using analogue and he really likes the Clair i5D PA, which is a fine PA, sure, but the newer Clair Cohesion CO12 was much more my kind of thing.

I specified a DiGiCo SD5 for my desk, because it was clear to me that as the show was so theatrical, I might need 10 or 20 scenes for one song...which I could only do in the digital world.

“In saying that, I’ve got quite a lot of outboard analogue gear because I was slightly nervous of taking it from full analogue to full digital without keeping some of the warmth or familiarity Roger would know and love.

In this time, I went to Rock Lititz and set up a CO12 pa and surround system. Our playback guy, Mike McKnight came and checked all of the surround effects etc. which turned out great. It was the right thing to do; it modernised the show in many ways and I haven’t looked back since changing out the kit.”

Lemon noted that mixing this show is a lot of fun: “Roger is so receptive to input, along with the band, we just keep chipping away and changing things all the time and make the show better and better.

Clair Global couldn’t have been more helpful in facilitating all the changes I requested. They just made it happen and understood what I wanted to do. It is a big thing on a tour of this size, to change everything out, but they were wonderfully supportive.

“Along with the PA change, I got Dean Mizzi in as my Systems Engineer.

I’d done my research and he was regarded very highly. Everybody I spoke to from around the world who had worked with him, said that I’d get on really well with him. It was sort of like ‘you’re both Australian, nerdy guys!’ Dean and I have spent a long time discussing and experimenting how to achieve the most consistent result with the surrounds indoors. Now the question has been; how we’re going to get that to translate for the largest outdoor gigs. We had to work out how to time them and confine them to create the same experience for each zone of the audience in a large area. For the outdoor surrounds, we weren’t touring enough CO10 to do it entirely, so we chose one of my other favourite PA’s - the L-Acoustics K2.

I think it’s a really good box, and luckily for me, now that Clair Global and Brit Row are one incredible touring entity, we could advance book a lot of K2 for these Italian shows.

“With our tight schedule, we decided to get Josh Lloyd from Britannia Row involved as our advance man. Between Dean and Josh; Dean knows L-Acoustics products really well, and having Josh Lloyd on board it made it so great.”

Lemon explained that he chose the SD5 because it, “always feels like a faster engine when being networked to Soundgrids”. The number of macros was also a bonus: “It’s a simple layout for a console in this kind of theatrical come rock show. I needed speed. I wanted to keep the analogue sound as 57

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SFX Shooter, Reid Nofsinger; Monitor World L-R: Eric Piontkowski, Stage Manager; Dean Mizzi, Crew Chief / System Engineer; Richard Burke, Monitor Tech; Matt Napier, Monitor Engineer; Alex McCormack, PA Tech; Nicole Wakefield, Stage Tech; Tim Joyce, Surround System Engineer; Cesar Lopez, Surround PA Tech and Tristan Robbins – PA Tech.

I mix through a lot of groups. I always use Waves NLS on there to give it a little bit of texture before it hits all the other analogue stuff I carry. I need all the outputs for right surround, rear surround, left surround etc, and have all those effects at my fingertips. One of the things that keeps coming up talking to many of the promoters was having a really big sounding mix without the volume. We rarely go over 100db, yet everybody talks about how big this show sounds, and that’s down to using chains of compression and limiting correctly, plus a great pa!

“Many sound engineers who I highly respect have come along to this show and complimented us on the audio which has allowed me to feel very proud of my team. I guess that’s what happens when you work with a great production, Roger and Chris Kansy have put together a pretty amazing bunch of people, and I’m glad to be part of it.”

For microphone duties, it’s a Shure SM58 for vocals. Lemon stated: “Roger has always used this, and I still like the sound of them, so it’s easy to employ them on all 9 of the vocalists.”

Elsewhere, the mic choices are varied; Heil PR48’s, Neumann 184’s and 103’s, Shure SM57’s to name a few.

Highly-praised System Engineer, Dean Mizzi, joined the conversation: “We’re touring the CO-10 boxes as part of our arena system, but as mentioned, for the outdoor shows and all factors involved, it made sense that we employed a K2 supplementary system from Brit Row. We needed a large box count to do the Italian outdoor shows properly, and having access to the L-Acoustics inventory of Brit Row just down the road, made it an easy solution. Josh was integral in advancing the installation of the surround towers and infrastructure for these outdoor shows. The arena system is CO-12 on the front end, and CO-10 as the surround system. The outdoor show is kind of an extension of what we’re doing in the arena, but in an even less controlled environment! Here in Rome, with the length and shape of the field, we’ve added a whole other level of complication!” he laughed.

“Especially given that it’s an asymmetrical venue. It gets really tricky as 1 side of the venue is completely different to the other. The biggest challenge with the surround stuff is that there is a lot of content that is played in unison with the main system, so it’s hard to achieve a somewhat timealigned PA.” Mizzi also noted the kind of responsibility the audio team has: “Roger has the vision. He sat and worked with producers initially to develop this show and surround content we’re using now, and continues to adjust and improve content almost daily. We have the task of doing justice to that vision, and creating the same experience for each audience area in the environment we’re working in. There has been some fairly unconventional methods used to tune and time align these large systems, to say the least!

This camp has an incredible sense of community, and that support makes it so much easier to work in.”

The touring inventory comprises of 72 Clair Cohesion CO-12’s, 48 CO-10’s, 12 CO-8’s, 24 CP218 Subs, 54 Lab Gruppen PLM20000Q amplifiers

and Shure Wireless RX/TX. The stadium configuration in Rome comprised (per side) a main hang of 16 Deep CO-12’s, a side hang of 16 deep CO-12’s, ground sub array of 24 CP218’s, 12 CO-8’s for front fill and surrounds of L-Acoustics 72 K2 boxes and 48 Clair CO-10’s.

Mike McKnight, Audio PlayBack Tech, joined the Roger Waters camp in 2009 for The Wall tour. “I jumped at the chance, and am very happy to still be a part of Roger’s tours. During pre-production, I work closely with Roger, the video department and the drummer to get the music together so that they can begin to work on the visuals. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made in pre-production on the tempo maps and arrangements because once they’re set and the visuals are rendered, it’s extremely timeconsuming to change the visuals to match the music. Therefore, we need be somewhat done with the basic arrangements. Endings and transitions between songs are an evolving thing that we deal with during the rehearsal period.”

McKnight uses MOTU Digital Performer for any the additional surround sound effects and surround sound music, as well as the click tracks and time code. “I send time code to the audio, video and automation departments as they each depend on time code for their automation. The band hears a click track that they play to so that the music is always in sync with the visuals.”

McKnight utilises 2 Apple Mac Minis for playback, a 3rd MBP to record the shows, MOTU interfaces for MADI and analogue ins and outs, and Digital Performer for the software.

MONITORING A LEGEND In monitor world, it’s down to engineer Matt Napier to mix the talent. “The Wall monitoring duties were looked after by the late, great Ian Newton.

They were big shoes to fill, and it was an honour to be asked. I had worked with Mike McKnight many years ago on a Madonna tour, and we had kept in touch, so when Roger was looking for someone for Desert Trip in 2016, Mike put my name in the hat.”

As mentioned by Lemon, Napier’s desk of choice is a DiGiCo SD7. “I have a close relationship with DiGiCo; I’ve been a fan of theirs since they first started out. I keep playing with other consoles, out of curiosity, but for these large-scale shows, there isn’t really anything else that comes close.

They’re reliable - I’ve done well over 1,000 shows on SD7’s and only ever had one incident that scared me, which was resolved in minutes - so I like those odds! They are ergonomic and fast to work on which is essential for monitor mixing. They sound great, they handle a huge audio count and the back-up service from DiGiCo is second to none.”

Napier is using over 100 snapshots all fired from SMPTE timecode. 130 input channels, 37 output busses, 7 stereo and 3 mono groups, 32 x 14 Matrix, 24 Control Groups and 15 internal FX Engines. Then there are the external ‘toys’. “I use a Lexicon 480L. It’s ancient but the Random Hall verb is superb for IEMs. My favourite live vocal chain is in-line with Roger’s vocals 58

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Dean Mizzi, System Engineer; SFX Shooter, Reid Nofsinger; The trucking team.

before they hit my desk. It’s an XL42 with an Empirical Labs Distressor inserted. It’s a great setup that can be tailored for any singer, and it gives me the ability to grab something quickly that isn’t affected by scene changes. I also have another distressor inserted over Roger’s Bass and a couple of Al Smart C2 Compressors for bus compression on Rogers Mix. “We are using SMPTE quite extensively. The band are fully live but they are locked to click as the whole show is designed as a cinematic experience, locked to the visuals. The surround system is fed with discreet sound effects from Mike at playback. Because of this, SMPTE is constantly running so I can utilise this to fire my snapshots. Some snapshots will be full recall, but others will just do very specific rides. With 10 musicians on stage it allows me to give each musician an unprecedented amount of attention and care to their mix whilst still being predominately focused on Roger’s Mix. Roger is treated as a FOH mix on my desk; he runs off the master bus and I utilise control groups and bus groups to really keep his mix tight and album like.

“These musicians are all top of their game, and expect a lot of attention paid to their mixes. This is where the multiple snapshots per song really come into its own,” he added. IEM-wise, there are 20 channels of Sennheiser 2000, and all musicians are on Jerry Harvey Audio JH Roxanne in-ears. “It’s a great combination; the 2000 is a very musical IEM and the Roxannes are a great product, ideally suited for stage use.”

There are also some wedges dotted about the stage, to add “a bit of weight and also to have some ambience on stage for when the children join us for Happiest Days / Another Brick in The Wall. I also gave Jon Carin, the keyboard player a pair of L-Acoustics 108P’s, there’s a few Clair 12AM’s and our drummer has a Clair CP118 which works great in this application.

Napier is also mixing 8 channels of Sennheiser Instrument systems and 6 channels of the new Shure Axient Digtial.”

The engineer also looked after the tour’s rather tricky RF. And then there was RF in an ancient part of Rome, which was a whole new challenge. “We had over 40 channels of RF squeezed into DTV guard bands, crammed into just 3 8Mhz TV channels that were clear of local interference!” he said.

“Clair Global have been amazing throughout everything. We have a top-class crew and Rich Burke and Nicole Wakefield who have been looking after the stage end with me, are absolute stars! Greg Hall and Britt Natale

at Clair Global have put un-real hours into this show, and made sure from the first conversation we had, to the support us with everything we need.

Dean Mizzi is a great Crew Chief and System Engineer too; the show really wouldn’t happen without him. He deserves some kind of un-sung hero award!” he concluded.

Lemon also praised their vendors: “I’ve worked on and off with Britannia Row since 1988, and with Clair since around 1995. They both always had great service, but now seeing it today with Troy and Shaun Clair, Bryan Grant and Mike Low from Brit Row, watching the development of the companies as a sound engineer has been spectacular. It gives you great flexibility as an engineer because they can just facilitate your choices. I think them joining forces is a really positive move. To me, with how perfectly this tour worked, it feels like they’ve always been one company. That’s why for us, this whole tour has been able to work so smoothly.”

TPi Photos: Kate Izor (all show shots) & TPi . www.rogerwaters.com www.deadskinboy.com www.wonder.co.uk www.taittowers.com www.premieraviation.com www.airworksinflatables.com www.eventionsproductions.com www.clairglobal.com www.britanniarow.com www.negearth.com www.upstaging.com www.beatthestreet.net www.transamtrucking.com www.wicreations.com www.vyv.ca www.unipix.tv www.blimpguys.com www.appointmentgroup.com www.strictlyfx.com www.rockitcargo.com 60

BEAR WITNESS TO KATY PERRY’S UNRESTRAINED WORLD The summer of 2018 has seen some of the world’s biggest acts visit the UK’s stadiums, arenas and festivals, but none have gone quite as big on the weird and wacky side of technical production as California’s own Katy Perry. TPi’s Ste Durham was at Manchester Arena to meet the 100-strong crew behind this huge undertaking

In a corner of the market that has been guilty of taking itself too seriously in recent years (with varying levels of both authenticity and success), pop superstar Katy Perry seems to be one of the few artists striving to deliver a truly over-the-top live event. Restraint is apparently a dirty word in the camp and, as a result, audiences are invited to experience a concert in which each and every song is like a one-off awards show performance.

“We’ve gone from 4 trucks on the first tour to 30 trucks now, and her scope and vision has grown a great deal in that time as well,” began Production Manager, Jay Schmit. “She’s involved from the very initial concept and message; leading the charge before allowing the creative team to elaborate her ideas and tell the story practically.”

In order to attain the consistently high standard for which Perry’s live shows are now well-known, Schmit relied on tried and trusted vendor relationships - along with a few notable additions.

Schmit commented: “There’s very little on a Katy Perry tour that’s ‘cookie cutter’ dry hire, and the show is always evolving, so vendors need to be able to adapt and overcome to help us bring her vision to life.”

He continued: “Clair Global have been our audio supplier for a long time, and we always have Upstaging for lighting, but we went with a new company for video this time around - Real Deal Touring - who were very determined in coming on board and helping us out. They’ve been flawless actually.

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Although special effects supplier Pyrotek has a long history with Schmit, this was the company’s first foray into the unique demands of a Katy Perry production. “They’ve done an outstanding job, as have all of the prop companies,” the PM confirmed. “While most prop shops would be happy to make a 20ft tall basketball hoop or an 8ft pair of golden dice, actually making this stuff roadworthy is the biggest trick. You have to have vendors that understand where Katy is coming from creatively, as well as realising that the props have to travel extensively and be sturdy enough to have dancers and Katy interacting with them.

“ShowFX and DAS Design Works have both been big helps throughout the tour; not to mention other promos and one-offs. These guys can really turn them out quick! Flix FX and Backline Fabrication also supplied props, and both knocked it out of the park.” Airworks and Landmark Creations supplied the inflatable pieces that completed the extensive array of props, while TAIT provided set and numerous automation elements and Five Points Production Services handles rigging duties.

Despite this enviable roster of fabricators, Perry’s limitless imagination keeps Schmit and his team on their toes: “It’s always an incredible fear - what’s next?” he laughed. “Every time you think we’ve plateaued, you think ‘how much bigger and kookier can it get?’ It turns out that those aren’t good questions to ask yourself in this camp because Katy will come up with answers and you’re not gonna like them!

“In all seriousness, she - along with Es Devlin, Baz Halpin and the Squared Division guys - continues to raise the bar every time. It’s a team effort. Once they’ve conjured up these ideas, we have to figure out any practical limitations there might be. It’s great, wonderful, exciting stuff; but there are only 12 inches

in a foot and 24 hours in a day. It takes the whole team to push those limits, and in this team everyone steps up and takes ownership. There’s a gratitude that’s easy to see - we’re all grateful to have the opportunity and ability to do this.

Our team amazes me every day.”

Further industry stalwarts provided the backbone to this mammoth touring unit, including Silent Partners for video content, Sound Moves for freighting, Transam for trucking, Eat Your Hearts Out for tour catering, Road Radios, SOS for logistical support, and Beat The Street for bussing.

To conclude, Schmit heaped further praise on his hard-working crew: “It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a community to put on a show like this. I couldn’t do this without my right hand, Kim Hilton, and the same goes for our Stage Manager, Alan Doyle, and Chelsea Skals. No one is more important than anyone else, and everybody has a job to do.”

LIGHTING Renowned LD Baz Halpin was asked to design a lighting rig to complement the original stage and set devised by Es Devlin, under the creative direction of Antony Ginandjar and Ashley Evans, otherwise known as The Squared Division.

Lighting and Screens Director, Drew Gnagey, was chosen to operate the show, having programmed it with Eric Marchwinski during rehearsals.

Gnagey explained: “Baz is in LA currently so I am here to make sure we’re up to snuff every day and everything is running smoothly. The core of the rig is made up of a couple of paintbrushes; we have 3 arch trusses that are flown above the fascia and video wall split in the middle, the upstage 2 of which are lined with Claypaky Scenius Unicos. The downstage most arch is lined wuth Scenius Spots for those big, bold statements.

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KATY PERRY

“Another paintbrush is the 78 TMB Solaris Flare Q+ LRs in the fascia, which are super bright and allow us to do a lot of fun stuff with programming and a couple with bitmap effects in the disguise media servers. We also have Chroma-Q Colour Force II 48’s and 72 lining the front edge of the stage, the thrust, and the B-stage, and some GLP impression X4 Bar 20’s on the floor. The bi-part video wall opens and closes to reveal a circle truss behind it, loaded with 24 Claypaky Mythos 2’s, and a torm wall behind that with over 100 GLP X4’s.”

Gnagey said: “The Scenius Unicos and Flare LRs are the brightest fixtures of their type I’ve ever seen - I can’t say enough great things about them. We do a lot of aggressive programming where everything is master-planned, so it’s nice to have fixtures you can rely on to handle what we’re slamming out of the console.”

The tour also made use of RC4 Wireless’ new RC4Magic Series 3 SX software, which controlled the LEDs in Perry’s props and some of her costumes with 19-bit per colour wireless dimming. In particular, an RC4Magic S3 2.4SX DMXio-HG transceiver and an RC4 S3 2.4SX DMX4dim was used to illuminate the massive inflatable lion head fabricated by Landmark Creations that dominates the stage for the song, Roar.

According to the manufacturer, ease of use is one of the hallmarks of the RC4 Wireless system, where all of the products work in a similar manner known as ‘Harmonized Design’.

“The beauty of the RC4 Harmonized Design is that new concepts, techniques, and methods introduced for one product or project can seamlessly transfer to all our other products. Thus, overcoming the 16-bit barrier and delivering 19-bit per colour LED dimming in our DMX4dim results in higher resolution dimming in our LumenDim and W-DIM lines as well.

The same is true when new dimmer curves and other features are added.

Everything advances together, is debugged and tested together, and is released together,” said James David Smith, President and Chief Developer at RC4 Wireless.

“The RC4 equipment has been working flawlessly; technically, there have been no issues at all. The learning curve with the RC4 equipment was pretty seamless and it all made sense to us,” said Lighting Crew Chief, Thomas Walls.

The crew spent 7 weeks in rehearsals at Pennsylvania’s Rock Lititz campus, which allowed them the time to integrate elements of the show, such as lighting, automation and video, and control it all from the MA Lighting grandMA2 manned by Gnagey at FOH. He explained: “We definitely took the MA2 to the next level on this one. We fully use and integrate the XYZ positioning system within the console, which makes it extremely efficient. We get a lot of information from the TAIT guys in the automation department - they send us ArtNet triggers so we can see what’s moving and when, which ensures that all of the spotlight cues are hit perfectly.

“We also use a lot of position-based focus information in regards to Katy, the props and the dancers, as they’re all over the stage constantly during the show. Everything was recorded with XYZ values vs. pan / tilt values, and we calibrate the rig every day to make sure it’s correct. No matter where truss hangs and where the stage ends up in the venue, we can be sure the lighting focuses are in the same place every night.”

He continued: “This integration allows us very tight control of all the PSN (PosiStageNet) stuff we’re doing. Overall, it’s a great system for us and has been rock solid since day one.”

Walls gave further detail: “There’s one fibre line for 4 networks and we use managed switches to control everything. The whole show is timecoded, and I have 8 lighting guys on headsets in the rare case that something happens.

Despite the synergy created by this holistic approach to the show’s visuals - more on this later - Gnagey’s mixed duties also meant that he had to be on top for to keep every aspect as consistent as possible from city to city.

He said: “There’s a lot of moving parts on a show this size, so you have 64

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KATY PERRY

to be keenly aware of where you fit in the machine. My integration with the media servers has to be seamless, so I’m programming at FOH, getting stuff down the fibre to them, making sure content plays correctly and the IMAG looks great. Omar is a fantastic director - we have a lot of interaction and I love working with him. I have a channel to intercom to video world behind the stage all times, so I’m in constant contact with Video Director, Omar, and Danny Perdue, who is the Server Tech and Engineer for show.”

“I knew what I was coming into and how crazy the show was but everything fell into place during rehearsals. The show is broken into 5 sections, each with a corresponding colour palette. It takes you on a journey for sure!

“We have alternate pieces of content for certain songs that we can drop in, and our video engineer Danny is also a media server programmer so he can do so on the fly if necessary. He monitors and controls the content while Drew runs it from FOH.” Montes Rangel echoed Walls and Gnagey’s sentiments regarding the level of co-operation between all of the departments on the Witness tour: “It’s one of the most networked gigs I’ve ever been on. We have a 10GB router from here to FOH, and there’s so much information circulating via fibre from Drew to video, lighting, automation and underworld, as well as a full security camera system under stage. This means the Stage Manager Alan can see what’s happening everywhere and stay on top of all these cues.”

Perdue gave more detail: “Everything was dialled in during rehearsals but now that we’re physically changing things from show to show, it all has to be recalibrated on the spot. It’s just a daily check we do now. The level of networking is so useful because it means we can go out to FOH and work on something without any headaches.

“It’s something that takes a little more planning but we have a Google sheet with the IP address of every piece of kit on it, as well as VLANs separating automation traffic from the system gear traffic and the ArtNet. Everything is separated.

“We had some of the disguise guys come out to help us set it up, which has put us in a good spot. If we haven’t sectioned everything off it would be such a mess!”

Perdue cited the song Roar as a prime example of the network’s strength, wherein the Solaris Flares in the fascia are pixel mapped from the disguise servers, allowing the video department to drive the lights.

So are we finally seeing the fabled integration between departments that has been promised for so many years? “I think so,” said Montes Rangel.

“It’s slowly happening, and a lot of the bigger tours are getting into the groove of having an IT guy out with them. We did a lot of the groundwork in rehearsals so it wasn’t necessary to have one on this tour, and if anything needs to change you can just reference the Google sheet. And it’s not just visuals - everything is working together to create what you see on stage.“

VIDEO The centrepiece of the show design was a gigantic LED eye, which stretched 44ft from edge to edge, made entirely from ROE Visual MC-7H 7.5mm and housed in frames by Acass Systems USA. The bi-part video wall mentioned

by Gnagey previously was the eye’s iris, and served as a portal for props, lighting reveals and the artist herself at the top of the show (she arrived via custom fabricated flying machine, of course). Obligatory arena-sized IMAG came from 2 Barco FLM R20+ per side, while the show’s live content was captured by a combination of 6 manned Sony cameras, 3 Panasonic robocams and a static drum cam.

Video Director, Omar Montes Rangel - who took the reins from Video Creative Director, Gabriel Coutu Dumont, explained: “We have 2 disguise gx 2 media servers to drive what is essentially 4 different screens. The eye is 5440 active pixels wide by 1570 high, and we are pushing a lot of information through it. Even though we’re sending a full 1920x1080 master to each wall, everything is done in quadrants. It’s split down the middle and we have Tessera S4 processors from Brompton Technology to control the walls. Nothing is being stretched, as the A and B show is essentially the same, it’s just width of eye changes by 12ft and the height changes a little.

We always know ahead of time so we can adapt pretty easily.”

The crew ran a pair of Ross Video Carbonite Black 3MEs, one for the IMAG and one for the LED wall. Montes Rangel continued: “It’s a spectacle on stage so I try to get perspective and capture all of her interactions, all of her flying moments and so on. It’s a fast cut show, though it does slow it down a bit in the middle. There’s lots of angles and switching from left to right to the beat. I cut it depending on what’s on stage, but the certain spots that I have to hit consistently are usually the ones I get from camera 1 at FOH. If I miss one of the props or some of the action I’ll always try and catch it from a different angle next time around.

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KATY PERRY

AUTOMATION A major part of the action on the Witness tour is thanks to an extensive amount of automation; taken care of in this case by TAIT. Automation Operator, Shaun Quinn - 1 of a 4-man team - talked TPi through some of the key factors.

“This show has 28 axes of motion,” he began. “That’s not a lot for some shows but we still have 8 matrix lifts, the bi-part video wall, and a huge fly track that is based on 2 trolleys that move 200ft up and down stage on a curved truss. We fly performers, props and Katy herself throughout the show.

We also have 8 inflatable planets in the ceiling that descent from their sheaths and and illuminate at one point.”

He continued: “In this show there’s always something moving, whether that’s props, lifts or flying performers. In 2-hour show there’s close to 300 cues, which again is not a crazy amount, but there’s literally one song where I can relax for 2 mins.”

Quinn assisted in the TAIT Navigator programming required the show and, while there’s nothing unprecedented in terms of the moves themselves, the amount of integration does increase the show’s complexity. “We send our position and velocity data to video and lighting so they can track their

equipment. There’s also an upstage hydraulic lift used for loading and unloading scenery that is manually controlled by other stagehands and a downstage zipper lift in the B-stage run using a joystick by someone underneath the stage. This is purely due to the fact that some things need to be spotted in person to ensure we are as safe as possible.”

Given that Perry flies at 5 different times during the show, on a combination of props and hand loops, safety and redundancy is of the utmost concern; as Head of Automation Patrick Leonard - who has flown the artist for almost 10 years - explained: “Any performer flying has element of risk, obviously, but flying the artist is even riskier. In other words, if something gets stuck or goes wrong, you can leave a piece of scenery in the air, but you cannot leave a human being there - particularly as she’s the whole show!”

He continued: “We’re moving from start to finish. It is a lot more work but the entire crew knows the routine instinctively now and no one has the show off. If the carps aren’t on stage they are packing prop trucks. If that didn’t happen we’d have blockages and hours added on to load-out. We’ve got 4 or 5 trucks gone already by end of show. Our Stage Manager Alan Doyle is the master of logistics - it’s very impressive.”

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KATY PERRY

Above: Perry’s selection of customised Sennheiser modules; Head of Automation Patrick Leonard; Special Effects Shooter, Simon Brierley.

So, in the land where anything goes, has Leonard ever had to say no the to Perry’s limitless imagination? “There was discussion of some more hand loop stuff but we put the kibosh on that because as soon as you have people flying over audience to that extent it becomes impractical and not as safe. Instead we bring her out about 12ft over audience’s head on the planet piece, before she winds up about 42ft off the deck. It then just camelbacks down the track.”

Leonard concluded: “I’ve got a great crew of 4 guys, who also help out with power - I do the advance for transformer rentals and stuff - and the whole crew is very production-based and not departmentalised at all.

☞

Everyone has his or her jobs but we’re here first and foremost to help put on a good show. At the end of 20-hour day you’ve got to get on a bus with these people and either forget about the day or talk about the important things.

The fact that we can still have a laugh and beer while we’re doing that, even after all this time, is testament to how great this group of people is.”

SFX & SM Special Effects Shooter, Simon Brierley, had a team of 3 with him on site to ensure that the creatives could reinforce their eye-popping show design with a good amount of pyrotechnic muscle. He talked through his setup:

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Above: FOH Engineer, Toby Francis, and System Tech, Paul Eric Jump; Media Server Tech, Danny Perdue, and Video Director, Omar Montes Rangel; Head Rigger, Chuck Melton; Automation Operator, Shaun Quinn; Lighting Crew Chief, Thomas Walls, and Lighting and Screens Director, Drew Gnagey.

“We’ve got 4 smoke machines underneath the stage that pop up for 5 or 6 songs, and during the opening when Katy emerges from the bi-part wall I have 12 Co2 jets located in the massive circle truss at upstage centre to create a vortex.

“There’s also 12 confetti cannons on the automation fly track that are used during Swish Swish, and 4 ground level confetti blowers that are used 3 times during the night. We have close to 300 pieces of pyro for Firework including comets, gerbs, and mines - all of which goes off in the space of a minute and a half!”

After Perry’s big entrance song, Brierley had the idea to keep the intensity high by adding pyro to the second song in the set – a notion welcomed by Schmit and the creative team. He explained: “I went to Jay during a break in South America as I had something to get off my chest.

I expected nothing in response really, but I ended up getting a call from Ashley & Antony. They asked me about my idea, which was to add a smaller pyro board on the B-stage for Roulette that comes out of nowhere. We tried it one night and it’s been there ever since.”

Brierley added: “She’d never done special effects on that song before, so it feels great that it was my idea that’s given us something new at top of the show. Obviously the Firework cue has always been there but Jay is good at letting me tweak things to make them look better. I stick to the score or the cues, I just change colours and combinations from time to time. I really just wanted to get it off my chest and I was shocked when it went past Jay, now it’s a staple!”

While safety is always a primary concern for crewmembers in Brierley’s position, the sheer volume of movement in this show prompted him to make additional considerations. “It’s always safety first with me, but it helps that the artist, band and dancers are great. For Firework, the pyro boards are mid to downstage, while Katy’s on the B-stage, there are no dancers and the band stay well upstage. There is a little bit of extra stuff above band, but it looks a lot closer than it actually is. Roulette could be an issue due to the crowd but, again, it’s more of an illusion of proximity and the surprise factor. I sometimes hit beams at lower trim heights but it’s not

been a problem, and I try my best to miss the inflatables!”

Even with a large proportion of the crew singing his praises, Stage Manager Alan Doyle was proving to be Manchester’s most elusive man. That was, until TPi cornered him in the production office 15 minutes before show time… “You found me,” he laughed with amiable resignation.

As is often the case with crewmembers as enigmatic as Doyle, he was a key component in the Katy Perry touring machine. He began: “There’s a core of us that have been together for a while - Chuck [Melton, Head Rigger] and myself have worked together since 1996. We’ve had to train a bunch of lads for this tour, kind of bring them round to our way of doing things. For a pop show of this size, teamwork is essential, and everyone needs to have each other’s back.

“I never have to worry about any department. The automation team is unbelievable; they’re so calm and content that Katy never even notices if there are any problems. The carps get their arses kicked every day with the props, but it’s a Katy Perry tour so they now what’s up. We had to beat into them what she wants - and that’s perfection.

He continued: “These guys are going 100% on a daily basis. Nobody stands still. We always get the old ‘did you bring enough shit?’ from local crew when we turn up but when they see it, it makes sense.”

As Doyle calls the show, it is up to Duncan Kaye to take care of the prop load-out of the first 4 trucks during show. “Without him I’d be lost,” Doyle said. “We ran through the show 20 or 30 times before we even went out on tour, so the rhythm was already kind of established. Catering and props loading out during the show helps a bunch, and then it’s balls to the wall for 2.5 hours. Sometimes it’s a case of keeping the local crews’ attention. It’s a show in itself to see all the props moving around backstage!”

AUDIO The main hangs at Manchester Arena consisted of 16 Clair CO-12’s per side as the main hangs, with boxes of i3 on the sides and 3 CP-218 subs flown per side in cardioid mode. There were 6 additional CP-218’s in the centre, also in cardioid, on the ground and 2 more on the side for fill. Front fills were 70

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KATY PERRY

stowed underneath the lip of the main stage, while the dancers relied on Clair 12AM wedges for on-stage monitoring.

Paul Eric Jump, System Engineer and Clair Crew Chief, said: “There’s no real secrets to how we set up the system; just considerations that we have to make due to the fact that she’s probably out in front of the PA for 80% of the show. The top 4 boxes of the main are at 80 degrees and the other 12 are at 120 degrees, which splatters stage and thrust. She’s such a strong singer that it doesn’t really affect her. Even when she does the ‘planet’ fly gag - and she’s literally 20ft in front of the PA while talking - we still don’t have any feedback issues.”

He continued: “Time alignment is main thing and there’s no real EQing, it just sings. We’ve built EASE Focus files to represent most of the world’s main arenas, but if it looks off we can verify distances and heights. Any discrepancies can be sent back so they can be updated, which means we can do a tour in advance rather than measuring rooms every day.”

Given the size and scale of the production, wiggle room was in short supply for the audio crew, as Jump explained: “Everything has its place and can’t move, not even a few feet. We have the planet balloons in between the main hangs besides all the video, lights and automation.”

Chuck Melton, Head Rigger, was in concurrence as he talked through the rig: “It’s certainly quite congested up there, but the fact that there’s no play almost makes things easier - you hit it dead on, or you don’t. We’ve got 120 points altogether, 22 of which are on 2-tonne Chainmaster hoists and 98 are on the 1-tonnes, with the entire rig weighing 120,000lbs in total. We’ve never had to switch to the B-Show for weight reasons; that’s dictated by the width and trim of some venues.”

With the audio-centric chat well underway, we were joined at FOH by renowned audio engineer Toby Francis; who was keen to begin by discussing his new weapon of choice - the Yamaha RIVAGE PM10. “I’ve used the same series of desks for the last 10 years - which I still love - and I’ve always been comfortable on other brands as well. If anything, I kind of skipped over this range,” he said.

“I ended up trying it, and I have to say that this is a phenomenal console.

I love the sound of it and the Silk feature on preamp is pretty extraordinary.

I don’t always like plugin packs but all native options on here are amazing.

“We did a surprise show within a week on it (I could have done it within 2 hours really) and the MD had already noticed a huge difference in the first rehearsal with it. The lesson is not to prejudge. In the world of audio, the

pieces are constantly moving, key people and tech are both being shared, and advances have been huge across the board.”

Francis continued: “I output stems from the digital console and use the automation on it to make changes within those stems. I sum it in a Rupert Neve 5059 Satellite summing mixer and master each stem at that insert point, before outputting that together through a stereo band bus, that I drive in a certain way. I then stereo everything, which puts the band bus and the vocals together. This method ensures that the music is wrapped around the vocals, much like on the studio tracks.”

Rupert Neve’s involvement with the PM10 was a major factor in enticing Francis to give the console a go; a decision that has already benefitted the veteran engineer on this run: “It’s classic Neve, it’s brilliant. I hardly have any EQ on my inputs - I drive the preamps really hard because I’m summing elsewhere. There’s a 1073 model in there that I put on a lot of the inputs and I drive it pretty hard. That and the Silk combined give you an uncanny analogue quality. A lot of the inputs are virtual - the guitars are Fractals, the keys are computers, the bass is DI - but this desk allows you to give life to things that don’t have it.”

Everything comes to Francis at FOH in both digital and analogue forms, allowing him to make the choice on which to use through the PA. “I take mostly analogue because I think it sounds better,” he explained. “We create a MADI digital path as well as the analogue one for basically everything.

We’re already planning the next tour this way, now that I’ve seen the advantages.”

Francis’ kudos extended to the system: “It’s a very responsive PA. There’s a lot of definition, which is essential for us, and the mids are so phase-correct. I don’t like this PA because I work for Clair; I work for Clair because I like their PAs,” he laughed. “We used to use twice as many subs to get the same level of low end as we do here, plus we get that added punch.

They want the audio to be as big and impressive as the visuals.”

Jump previously alluded to Perry spending a large portion of the show in front of the PA - an obstacle that Francis and his PM10 were more than capable of overcoming. He explained: “For a start, both Katy and her 2 backing vocalists are phenomenal singers with great mic technique, so that helps, and this console helps me deal with the rest. I’ve got a full wide dynamic EQ on all of the vocal mics, where the thresholds tighten and loosen according to where Katy is on stage, snapshot-to-snapshot. I update that as we go.

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Above: Stage Manager, Alan Doyle; Production Manager, Jay Schmit; Monitor Engineer, David ‘Super Dave’ Rupsch.

“Other than that, the Sennheiser 5235 is the perfect mic for getting a good sound from a singer who is firing all night. I use to think those things were fragile,” he chuckled. “She throws the mics all over the place and she even has a bit with one of the dancers where they both kick it around!

Everyone’s in on it now!

“I’ve used that mic it since I started mixing artists that came out in front of the PA and it’s amazing. The minute she’s in the PA pattern you can hear a difference; she’s a little less present because the entire mix is hitting her at the same level. I go up on stage during soundcheck when the music is blasting out and I can’t believe we make it work. She has one ear out when she comes off the stage and that’s really helpful for her.”

Another factor that has influenced Francis’ mixing technique in recent years has been the seemingly relentless proliferation of what was once called ‘bootleg’ concert footage. “Both Katy and Ariana [Grande, another Francis artist] are huge on social media and YouTube, and have expressed that the show has to sound good on and through a phone,” he said.

“Literally millions of people are going to see and hear the show in that way every week during a tour. The latest phones represent sound very well and any FOH engineer who doesn’t factor that in is making a huge mistake.

“Every 2 or 3 shows I check and see what’s on there… because the artists do too. The sound engineer’s role is becoming even more crucial, and PAs are more revealing now - it helps to promote talent but it can also show any imperfections in the chain.”

While Francis was one of the few that had no secondary jobs on the tour,

it didn’t mean that he got off easy: “The Clair guys do a lot of the carpentry stuff during the show and Paul fires confetti for 3 songs,” he then paused and gestured to his colleague, “you can usually complain to your system engineer about being covered in confetti but now he’s the one burying me in it!”

Monitor Engineer, David ‘Super Dave’ Rupsch, has looked after Perry’s personal mix on and off for the past 9 years, “I think of this as being more of a stage show environment than a musical performance environment,” he began. “It’s tightly choreographed and there are a lot of audio cues, wardrobe-specific mics and so on. I use a lot of snapshots, but with that I have to maintain fluidity so, if it goes off script, we can easily conform the mix. You have to be prepared for new things, even in the middle of a show. Communication is so important and we have a great team here.”

Wireless monitoring on stage came from a Shure PSM1000 system, with 16 channels for the 8 musicians, crew, guest vocalists, wardrobe, handlers, and Perry herself, who opted for Jerry Harvey Audio Ambient FR moulds.

The on-stage backing vocalists chose JH10’s, while the instrumentalists used JH13’s, and the drummer opted for Roxannes.

Rupsch favoured a DiGiCo SD7 at his position underneath the sprawling stage structure, as he explained: “I’ve always liked sound of DiGiCo, and the SD7 in particular is great for monitors. I wanted to maintain comfortable fluidity and consistency. We start every tour from scratch, as there can be musician or arrangement changes from tour to tour. Reverbs and so

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on can stay the same but there can be new playback, key patches, new instruments and players etc. Thankfully, we rehearse extensively and go to a lot of trouble to balance every component meticulously.”

He continued: “I’ve programmed certain ‘locked-in’ things to timecode that cover me if I’m involved in mic swaps or other problems that drag me away from the console. Even so, I can still grab hold of the faders and massage the mix to fit the room.”

According to Rupsch, Perry favours a full mix, even opting not to sing in initial rehearsals in order to ensure her reference is as perfected as every other aspect of the show. The engineer explained: “There’s not a huge amount of detail from her initially, so we just make it sound good for her and if there’s something she does or doesn’t like, she’ll let you know.

I ride her vocals throughout the show as the dynamics change, using a combination of short and long delays and some reverb coming in and out through the show for long notes or tightening up for a mouthy reflective reverb. You hit on different things that work for her over time.”

He continued: “I think a monitor engineer should help direct the feeling for the performers on stage, not just push the audio up or down. I have a camera feed of Katy throughout the show to monitor any mic drops or malfunctions that I wouldn’t catch without seeing them. We have such a great understanding now that I know what’s wrong if I see her messing with her IEMs or making a slight gesture that no one else would even notice.

“The amount of rehearsal helps a lot; it almost becomes autopilot and you can start to be proactive. I almost get upset when I get requests because I feel like I should have caught it already!”

Rupsch elaborated on Francis’ comments about the Sennheiser mics, also noting how well they stood up to the artist’s less-than-delicate onstage handling: “The company approached me at the start of my time with her and we discovered that they are modular so we can take them apart,” he said. “I can send them around to add colour or artwork that corresponds to her costumes. In the meantime I have different components from all the

ones she’s used, about 40 in total.

“They’ve always had pretty rough treatment, being thrown down and so on, but now it’s straight up turned into abuse! You’ve got to give the German engineering some credit; they’re absolutely solid, especially for a mic that has such incredible sound and characteristics. We can say with great certainty that they are very durable!”

The last words went to Francis: “These guys want to make miracles happen, and that’s part of what makes her Katy Perry - she does things you don’t necessarily think are possible. And she does it with style and flair, not to mention she’s an awesome boss. She could not have been nicer and more professional. She knows everyone’s names, and what everyone does.

She wants everything to be of the highest quality, including gear and crew.

Even the lowest guy on the crew will sing her praises.”

After completing the European leg of the tour, Witness ventured to Africa and Oceania, before coming to a close in Auckland, New Zealand, on 21 August 2018.

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PRODUCTION PROFILE

TRNSMT FESTIVAL The TRNSMT takeover of Glasgow Green saw DF Concerts produce 5 days of inner-city festival action over 2 weekends. With serious pedigree in festivals and other largescale music events in Scotland, the promoter has transferred from the rurality of what was T in the Park’s longest running location in Perthshire, to Glasgow’s oldest and most central park.

Weekend number 1 had 3 consecutive days of shows, with headline slots from Stereophonics, Liam Gallagher and Arctic Monkeys. The second weekend saw Queen + Adam Lambert headline on the Friday and The Killers on the Sunday, with no show on the Saturday. This programming mix would require vision and adaptability on the production front, particularly in light of the fact that Queen + Adam Lambert agreed to a very rare festival appearance on the basis that they would have a near replication of their arena tour production.

Adlib supplied sound, lighting and crew for the main stage, and subcontracted in UK Rigging, while Creative Technology handled the video elements, Serious Stages looked after all of the staging requirements and Mojo Barriers provided the crowd control infrastructure. Sound for the King Tut’s Stage was supplied by FE Audio and lighting by Nitesky. Buffalo Power ensured the whole site - including bars, concessions and all the production - had reliable power throughout.

DF Concerts’ James Walker was the festival’s Production Manager. As he planned for this year’s event, there were a number of considerations that helped to inform his decision-making. The nature of the programming meant that the production set-up would need to be as universal and as adaptable as possible.

“When we’re booking the artists, it’s generally on the basis that the festival production provided will be utilised by most performers,” stated Walker. “We try to put something in that will meet most people’s needs. All of the headliners have wanted to do different things that have required additional production modifications, which we’ve been able to accommodate.

“We’ve got a very meticulous building control system in Glasgow, which can make life very difficult if the plots aren’t together, out in advance and signed off - both from a staging point of view and in terms of what’s going in the roof. Both UK Rigging and Adlib have been great in getting everything done in plenty of time so it could be signed off. We’ve not had any surprises on the day, so credit to the artist teams for having their plans together and giving us what we need in good time.”

Discussing the decision to work with Adlib for the second consecutive year of the event, Walker added: “Adlib have obviously got a big base in Scotland now and they’re able to do what we need for audio and lighting. It went out to tender and they came up with the best offer. The kit they carry is great and it is essentially local - a company with a Scottish base. They’re great guys to work with.”

The company supplied an L-Acoustics PA system, featuring V-DOSC, KARA, K1, K2, ARCS II and KS28 subs - powered by LA12X amps - with K2 delays powered by LA8 amps. Side fills were ARCS with SB28 subs, while wedges were MP5 and dv-Sub. Adlib’s Graham Cochrane - Stage Manager for the main stage -

explained: “Last year we did an audio design and then reviewed it after looking at the Vanguardia report. We made some changes to the system, altering subs to cardioid arrangement so not as much bass goes out the back and we changed the speaker system on the delays so that it didn’t throw quite as far.”

Adlib’s Sam Proctor added: “We spent quite a lot of time with Vanguardia during noise propagation, testing what each part of the system contributes to offsite noise. That means we know that during the headline act when we’re getting up to a decent level of SPL, if there are any offsite complaints or you’re getting close to the limit, we know which part of the system contributes the most to this. This means we can tweak part of the system rather than alter it for everyone by bringing everything down.”

There were 2 DiGiCo SD12 consoles at FOH and 2 SD10’s onstage for monitors. Adlib’s Andy Russell explained: “We’re running an AB system, so people can get on the consoles and we switch that over at stage end. We’re running a live system onstage and a backstage system, so bands can line check backstage and when they roll on they can go to the live system – it’s all proved and patched, so it’s seamless.”

Adlib also supplied a package of tour-proven lighting fixtures across 3 - front, middle and back - trusses. Each one featured a combination of Claypaky Mythos, Stormy CC, Martin by Harman MAC Viper Profile and Wash, Showtec 4 Lite and 8 Lite Molefay and Par 64 6-way bars. The truss arrangements were complemented by a floor contingent of Claypaky Mythos, Claypaky Stormy CC and Martin by Harman MAC Quantum Wash, plus Robert Juliat Lancelot 4k followspots, and special effects from Martin

by Harman JEM ZR44 and Reel FX DF-50.

Lighting control was handled by a High End Systems Full Boar 4 and an MA Lighting grandMA2 Light.

Adlib’s Chris Neary commented: “Designing the lighting for TRNSMT was very much a two-step process. At the outset we designed a house festival system which was intended for use across every day of the event.

As headliners were confirmed, we then started designing a custom rig for each day of the festival. The individual rigs for each day were based on the original festival design with various changes and additions made to suit any artist requests or feedback from their LDs. “The choice of fixtures was a no brainer for us. The Vipers and the Mythos 2 are our workhorses for shows of this size. We find them to be incredibly reliable, with plenty of a punch to compete against the daylight for opening acts. At FOH we were running grandMA2’s - which we see as a must have at festivals these days - with a WYSIWYG suite available for any visiting LD’s needing to do pre-programming whilst the festival was live.“ The Lighting Crew Chief was Jon Barlow, FOH was looked after by Tom Webber and stage end was run by Charlie Rushton with Ash Dawson, Peter Lea, Chris Little and Jim Johnson.

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TRNSMT FESTIVAL

Stage Manager, Adlib’s Graham Cochrane with Production Manager, James Walker of DF Concerts; The Adlib crew: Alan Harrison, Andy Russell and Sam Proctor ; Creative Technology’s Senior Project Manager, Rob Day.

Neary continued: “Part of our remit at TRNSMT was also to oversee all the production rigging, this included the house audio, lighting and video systems as well as any touring extras that came through the festival. To achieve this we had Jimmy Johnson on site as our head of rigging. Jimmy had a comprehensive rigging plot for each day of the festival and worked with a team of local riggers to accommodate any changeovers or additions that were needed across the show days.”

Creative Technology flew 2, 7m x 4m Lighthouse R7 IMAG screens stage left and right and installed a Grass Valley Kayak based PPU in its backstage cabin for the purposes of mixing between BBC feeds, changeover advertising content, the FOH camera with long box lens feed or a mix from any acts that wanted direct control of the screens. The company also supplied a Playback Pro System for content (from Screen Activation) playback and liaised with the BBC for the management of feeds to and from the stage for the acts that needed it.

Creative Technology’s Senior Project Manager, Rob Day, explained: “Our festival FOH camera was provided to numerous bands for input into their media servers and everyone seemed pleased with being able to have access to this additional manned camera from us that was part of our package supplied to DF.” The AV specialist also provided bands with access to its Clear-Comm Freespeak wireless comms system, which alleviated the need for patching of tallies and comms between touring video systems and Creative

Technology’s. “This worked a treat,” enthused Day. The company is also providing fibre distribution from FOH to its cabin for bands that require signals in different places on stage, mainly using Blackmagic Design Open Gear Frames and Hicon Fibre lines to achieve this.

On top of this, there were individual requests, such as a Marshall CV365CGB MiniCam package for the Arctic Monkeys and a 15.5m x 8m Glux 10mm upstage screen for The Killers, which was also used by the Friendly Fires and Franz Ferdinand.

For the King Tut’s Stage, FE Audio supplied a d&b audiotechnik V Series PA system, d&b monitors, d&b D80 amplification, a Midas Pro 2 digital console at FOH and a Yamaha CL5 monitor desk. Nitesky’s setup included Claypaky, Robe and Lanta lighting fixtures with ChamSys control, Look Solutions Unique hazers, plus a Video Illusions wall utilising Novastar processing.

Photos: Ryan Johnston, Euan Robertson, Ryan Buchanan and Brendan Waters www.trnsmtfest.com www.adlib.co.uk www.ukrigging.net www.ct-group.com www.stages.co.uk www.mojobarriers.com www.fe.live.com

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QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT @ TRNSMT FESTIVAL

QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT @ TRNSMT On Friday 6 July, the second weekend of TRNSMT, the bill was topped by a headline show from Queen + Adam Lambert. This was quite the coup for the festival. From a production point of view, the festival environment is typically one of limitations and compromises - so many bands to accommodate and one main stage to do it on. While it may be feasible to replicate elements of the touring show, it is usually impossible to recreate it anywhere near exactly. When Queen + Adam Lambert and DF Concerts joined forces for TRNSMT 2018, the ‘typical’ and ‘usual’ rulebook was thrown out the window.

Working closely with Walker and his team, Queen + Adam Lambert’s production team - headed up by PM Paddy Hocken - succeeded in bringing the band’s entire arena show into a metropolitan festival environment.

This included a guitar-shaped 26m thrust, a dynamic 9-tonne scenic halo, all lifts and risers, plus full lighting and video packages.

Hocken said: “The festival has been super accommodating. Bringing 16 trucks into a festival is not a normal situation but James and his team have really understood what it is we’re trying to achieve and have put in extra resources in terms of labour, plant, real estate and infrastructure.

“They were able to accommodate a 2-hour sound check, which is amazing in a festival scenario. The band weren’t available to see any of this in production rehearsals, so it would have been quite a steep learning curve for them to just walk out onto it today. Although it’s very similar, it’s also quite different, which is hard from a performance point of view.”

Hocken worked closely with the tour suppliers to make the transition into the festival setup as smooth as possible. The tour had taken in 74 dates around North America, Oceania and Europe (since June 2017) before

heading to Scotland for TRNSMT and was departing for another outdoor show in Ireland 2 days later.

The tour suppliers were Clair Global for sound, Neg Earth & Upstaging for lighting, Creative Technology for video, Neg Earth for rigging, Rigorous Technology for load cells, TAIT Towers for set, staging and automation, Quantum SFX for special effects, ER Productions for lasers, and Dark Art Creative for real time tracking. Also on board was Power Logistics, Road Radios / WiFi for radios and IT, VER for wirless show comms, Pieter Smit for bussing, Fly by Nite for trucking, Rock-It Cargo for freight, GLD Productions for backstage furniture, Eat Your Hearts Out for catering, Piper Event Services for health & safety, Glide Travel, All Access Staging for camera platforms and Mission Control for wireless licensing.

The amalgamation of suppliers and kit meant for a tight coordination between the festival and visiting band. Walker commented: “Queen + Adam Lambert is the biggest production we’ve done at TRNSMT. Festivals aren’t something that they would usually do, so we wanted to give them assurances that we could get their arena show in, which is very important to the band - being able to walk onstage and be totally familiar with it.

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QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT @ TRNSMT FESTIVAL

“If you look at their rider from the outset, you wouldn’t necessarily think it would be achievable for a festival, but we did a lot of work - coordinating with Paddy and his team to get it to a point of saying ‘yeah, we can do this’.

Once that agreement was made it was about making all the modifications and changes needed to make it happen.”

The festival stage wasn’t identical to the arena show, as the guitarshaped thrust protrudes from a rectangular base, but this configuration allowed the band to do every show move. Beneath the stage, a scaffolding underworld was created to access the lifts and a scaffolding subdeck was installed at the front of the stage for the band’s rolling TAIT Towers Thrust and B-Stage to sit on top of. There was a prop lift for a drum kit and another for ‘Frank’ - a giant robotic head that is a prominent feature in the show. The prop lift also brought up a tricycle that Lambert rode during Bicycle Race.

In addition to the prop lifts there is a large scissor lift that lifts Brian May to the top of the downstage curved video screen giving the impression he is standing on top of it.

Hocken explained: “We’ve got all our onstage risers from the arena tour, we’ve just had TAIT modify them so that they have wheels on them. When we did our tech rehearsals, we did the arena set-up first and then we did our festival model where we brought a Serious Stages scaffolding deck in to replicate how it was going to be in a festival environment and to check the interface between our stuff and their stuff.”

He added: “All of our stuff is geared up for rolling in and out of arenas quickly, so James has made concessions to be able to accommodate all of huge dimmer dollies and things like that.”

Flown elements included 3 small lighting trusses, which was the backlight for the Main and B-stage, as well as the automated curved screen, which was the main IMAG for the show. The moving 9-tonne scenic Halo was equipped with Claypaky Sharpy Wash lights and a special cover, which masked the reflector lampshades during the support slots. Two inner delay towers were upgraded to integrate lighting fixtures that, in an arena, would be suspended over the audience.

Hocken said: “With the delay tower exercise, we had to combine lighting from 3 different vendors (Adlib, Neg Earth and PRG) and sound. Adlib were really great coming up with a plan that works and getting everything all

singing and dancing together.”

There was an upstage, rear lighting truss which was hung on the TAIT Nav hoists, plus an under-video truss that fired under the upstage screen, a 3-stack truss that fired through the video screen, as well as a rear black truss that masked the back of the stage.

In addition to the Sharpys, the lighting design utilised Scenius Unico and Mythos spotlights also from Claypaky, as well Philips Vari-lite VL6000 Beam and VL3500 Beam, plus Martin by Harman Atomic 3000 LED strobes and 8 PRG GroundControl Long Throw fixtures to supplement the ‘arena’ key lighting. There is also haze from MGD and smoke from Look Solutions.

Lighting Director Neil Holloway is working on a Jands Vista L5.

One of the main features of the set was the curved 10mm pitch carbon fibre Glux header screen measuring 24m x 4m from Creative Technology, which was built with a custom-made structure (by Acass Systems) to create a curve with 3 different radii. The company also supplied the 17m x 6m upstage screen, which also has a custom-made structure that allows servicing of the screen via a tracking ‘Librarian’s ladder’.

Queen + Adam Lambert Video Director and TPi Video Visionary, Steve Price explained: “We actually took our own video department with us - all the crew and gear were from the tour. It had to be that way because our screen set up is quite unconventional and there are times during the show when I’m directing three mixing and effects scenarios in different aspect ratios. TRNSMT has IMAG screens but we didn’t use them, preferring to contain all the video coverage on the screens built into the set. Sometimes there can be a disconnect between the artist and the crowd if the audience are looking off to the side screens and our design brings the audience back to the stage for the whole show.”

Creative Technology’s Head of Music/Entertainment, Graham Miller, said: “Ric Lipson from Stufish Entertainment Architects had come up with the design and concept, working in tandem with LD Rob Sinclair and Content Producer Sam Pattinson at The Third Company, and we had to find the right solutions to bring all that to life. We worked with the Production Manager, Paddy Hocken and fabricator Acass Systems to create this beautiful curve. We then had to send different video images across the different video surfaces – even animating the eyes in the robot head of 80

QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT @ TRNSMT FESTIVAL

Frank, which pops through the stage during the show.”

The all-important content for the show was run from 2 disguise gx 2 media servers with integrated Notch. Miller added: “As we got closer to delivering the project we decided that the gx 2 would give us the ‘grunt’ we needed to deliver across all of the screens. The disguise gx 2 enabled us to apply real-time effects with the integrated Notch set up for several songs.

Notch integration was especially useful for this project.”

Price added: “We couldn’t bring in the whole video rig as one of the trusses that normally hangs over the audience couldn’t be rigged in this setting so my overhead stuff for the B-stage was binned but that was compensated for in other ways. For example, being in the open air meant the start of the show was in daylight so I was able to include the crowd in my mix a lot more than I usually would, particularly in my reverse shots, and this generated a new and interesting connection between the band and the crowd, especially for B-stage parts of the show. This was the first time we’ve played in the open air with this design and it worked very well. It injected a different kind of energy into the show and I’d love to do some more of it.”

The band used the festival’s sound system. Hocken explained: “We opted to go with the festival PA as it was in-place already and designed specifically for that site. DF are also in tune what needs to happen for local authority compliance, so it made sense to stick with their PA.” Otherwise, the audio control package - supplied by Clair Global - was in use. This included the DiGiCo SD5 at FOH, Waves plugins, and outboard equipment from Lake, dbx, Alan Smart Research, Empirical Labs, Optocore and TC Electronic. The Clair monitors, Shure Axient wireless RF system and Shure R Series handheld system were also in play, together with Midas Pro X and DiGiCo SD5 monitor desks.

For DF, getting Queen + Adam Lambert on the bill and successfully integrating their arena production into a city centre festival environment sends a bold message, said Walker: “It’s important for us to show that something like the Queen + Adam Lambert show can be achieved at a festival. Some people might write the idea off because it’s not their show and they’ll need to make compromises because of other acts on the bill,

but we’ve taken that on, turned it on its head, and made it work.”

TPi Photos: Ryan Buchanan www.queenonline.com www.clairglobal.com www.negearth.com www.upstaging.com www.ct-group.com www.taittowers.com www.q-sfx.com www.er-productions.com www.powerlog.co.uk www.rockitcargo.com www.flybynite.co.uk www.pietersmit.com www.allaccessinc.com

Photo Credit: Ryan Buchanan

HAPPY TO BE PART OF TRNSMT

FESTIVAL STAGES • TOURING STAGES • SITE STRUCTURES • TEMPORARY BUILDINGS www.stages.com

+44 1749 899 188 81

FESTIVAL FOCUS

FESTIVAL FOCUS 2018 As is the annual tradition, we at Team TPi have packed our tents and wellies to bring you this year’s Festival Focus. Running every issue from July - October, the editorial crew will be speaking to the wonderful men and women who make festival season what it is; busy, bonkers and brillaint.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Black Light and High End Systems join forces for one of the newest additions to the festival - Light on the Shore.

New to Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) this year, Light on the Shore took people away from the city centre to the re-opened Leith Theatre, which has been closed for 30 years. With the theatre hosting the EIF from 1961 - 1968 and most of the ‘80s, there was great excitement for its return. Lighting Partner, Black Light, provided sponsorship for the events with support from High End Systems.

Light on the Shore honours Scottish music by celebrating the country’s global musical impact and recognising visitors who have made an unforgettable mark, featuring acts such as Mogwai, Django Django, The Jesus and Mary Chain and the grand finale of legendary Club Cumming hosted by Scottish star Alan Cumming.

Working with EIF for many years, it was a natural choice for Black Light to be lighting partner for the events. Black Light turned to High End Systems (HES) to provide additions to supplement its hire stock.

Back in March, Black Light invested in 26 HES SolaFrame 750’s. The entire fleet was out across Edinburgh this festival season, with further support from ETC that implemented further units from the range. The rig at Leith Theatre consists of 18 SolaSpot 2000, 18 SolaHyBeam 1000, 12 QUAD,

12 SolaFrame 750, and 6 Hex. Primary control is from the HES Hog 4, with back up from a Road Hog 4, and a Hedgehog 4 provided control to a secondary space within the venue.

Networking, venue wide power distribution, atmospheric effects, staging and rigging equipment is all also supplied by Black Light from its rental stock housed in Edinburgh.

HES latest innovations in the Sola Series bring modern efficiency to the timeless performance of its current fixture range. The bright white LED source contained within the units is generations ahead and even though the light is clean and crisp, the attitude is still sharp, bringing eye-popping visuals, punchy beams, saturated washes and spectacular effects.

Director of Black Light, Calder Sibbald, stated: “Working again with John Robb and his team at EIF has been a great experience. Light on the Shore has been full of amazing events for not just the people of Leith but the city as a whole. ETC are one of our major vendors and through this relationship and have allowed us access to the HES catalogue. In turn HES have played an integral part within our event sponsorship, the new additions to their product portfolio have shone for us at Leith Theatre.”

Photo: Ryan Buchanan www.eif.co.uk www.black-light.com www.highend.com 82

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ROCKIN’ 1000

ROCKIN’ 1000 Powersoft and Outline keep the heat high at recording-breaking Florence show, as Mike Clark discovers.

It all started back in the summer of 2015 in the Italian city of Cesena, when 1,000 musicians, recorded the Foo Fighters’ Learn to Fly in a local park, as an appeal to the rock band to play in the city. A YouTube clip of the performance soon went viral and sure enough frontman Dave Grohl humbly accepted the invitation. This year Rockin’ 1000 hit the headlines again with That’s Live in Florence, featuring the addition of brass and percussion sections and special guest, Courtney Love of Hole.

The location for the event was Florence’s Artemio Franchi soccer stadium, which hosted 1,454 performers from over 30 countries. The task of ensuring the 13,000+ spectators received a high-quality listening experience was entrusted to 2 key names in the international pro audio field, both headquartered in Italy - Powersoft and Outline. On the run-up to the show, the manufacturers’ specialists interacted with Rockin’ 1000 Sound Manager, Cisko Ridolfi, and the event’s Sound Designer, Francesco Penolazzi.

Penolazzi, who carried the mantel of Sound Designer and Head of RF, explained: “My role was to ensure the utmost quality and professionalism of the event, with a limited budget at our disposal.” Penolazzi counted on a team that included Laura Becchio in charge of cabling, Alfonso Barbiero, Pro Tools Technician and Monitor Programmer, Amek, and Vanis, who recorded the event, and FOH Engineer and System Tech, Luca Stefani.

Penolazzi outlined how the design of the PA was very much inspired by the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound’ but, “with a more modern original approach.” This included a main Outline PA with 10 stacks (6 with 6 GTO C-12’s each and 4 with 5 GTO each) and 6 lines of subs, all in end fire array (4 lots of 4 DBS 18-2’s and 2 made up of 4 LAB 21 HSs). These were supplied by Outline rental partners Emporio on Stage and Soundtech.

The PA was powered by 16 Powersoft X8’s with monitors using 3 more Powersoft amps, all connected via Dante and with an analogue backup.

The X8’s enabled the crew to monitor the status of the mains supply. “With mains feeds coming from various parts of the field, it was important to have a general overview,” explained Powersoft Application Engineer Thiago Terra.

“The X8’s also enabled us to do a little tuning and alignment according to requests from Stefani and Outline tech support and R&D engineer, Giulio Gandini.”

Gandini continued: “This was anything but a run-of-the-mill gig! The brief received from Sound Engineers Luca and Francesco was for the PA to reinforce the sound arriving from the musicians and keep spectators’ listening experience as realistic as possible.” He explained how the show forced him and his crew to remember the “rules you’ve learned and used in standard situations and assess the need to apply them”.

He elaborated: “For example, in a standard situation of stadium amplification, you would try to achieve the most even coverage with as little overlapping as possible between the various groups of enclosures,

in order to ensure identical sound in every seat. For Rockin’ 1000, it was indispensable to obtain overlap between the various clusters to ensure a realistic sound image.”

At FOH were 2 Yamaha PM10 consoles manned by Stefani and Penolazzi.

Stefani explained: “Francesco and I began working on the desks’ setup months before the event, exchanging show files via e-mail. We’ve collaborated frequently in the past on unusual projects, so when he started work on the first Rockin’ 1000 project we began corresponded regularly.”

Gandini added: “The loudspeaker systems were quite far from the spectators, so the use of line-array elements fitted with precise waveguides enabled to achieve extremely accurate sound coverage. Right from the drawing board stage, the brief was for clusters with 5 / 6 enclosures in order to have a suitable vertical configuration ensuring a good throw with the low frequencies - indispensible when amplifying the impact of a 1,500-strong band!”

As well as the headphone or in-ear monitoring used by the musicians, conductor and guest artist, on stage there were 2 Outline Vegas 12’s for additional monitoring and in the area occupied by the musicians, 6 Vegas 15 CX were deployed to communicate with them when they entered and left the pitch and during rehearsals.

The rig’s calibration and alignment was carried out using Powersoft’s intuitive proprietary Armonía software, with which the Powersoft amplifiers were controlled and managed. Armonía enabled the team to realise projects offline, and then match them with the hardware at the venue. The software also provided engineers numerous facilities for the realisation and calibration of their rigs. In addition it enabled direct interaction with Smaart.

An Outline Newton 16+8 system control and networking unit also received signals from the main FOH console and was on standby duty in the event of any network problems and for distribution. It received a Dante signal, carried out its computing, and distributed the Dante signal to the amplifiers on the pitch.

This was not Stefani’s first outing with Outline products. “I began using Outline back in the days of their Tripla enclosures, and since then I’ve had the opportunity of hearing and using their Butterfly, Mantas and GTO systems,” he stated. “The GTO is one of the few systems on the market that enables to obtain the sonic impact we want and above all, thanks to its lengthy pedigree, can ensure great reliability. In my opinion, the Outline systems are excellent for this type of event, at which SPL and pattern control are fundamental elements for achieving the necessary results.”

After the show, which ended with the 13,000-strong crowd singing Foo Fighters’ Learn To Fly with the mega band, there was tangible allround enthusiasm and Gandini stated: “It was really hot, hard work for all concerned, but amply repaid by the outcome of this unique event!” www.rockin1000.com www.powersoft-audio.com www.outline.it 84

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NEVER BEFORE HAS THE AMPLIFIER REACHED SUCH A HIGH LEVEL OF INTEGRATION

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NEWARK FESTIVAL

NEWARK FESTIVAL Rising UK-based production company, ASYS Events, recently celebrated an extraordinary 2 years of growth by fielding a substantial TW AUDiO VERA36 sound reinforcement system for the seventh annual Newark Festival.

Produced by the highly influential events promoter, Liz Hobbs Group (LHG), the Newark Festival is one of the UK’s most successful outdoor classic pop shows. Its success this year marked the culmination of a remarkable journey for ASYS Events, described by Managing Director Steve Jones as “lifting the company from one level to another with the help of TW AUDiO”.

The TW AUDiO VERA36 FOH system had high expectations to meet, as LHG weighed its performance against that of previous PA choices. “We are quite critical when it comes to sound systems because of course we are a PA company in our own right,” stated LHG Operations Director, Rupert Doogan-Hobbs. “But we’re really happy. We’ve used TW AUDiO before on some smaller DJ gigs and we were very happy with those results. So we asked Steve from ASYS Events to cover Newark Festival, which for us is a much bigger and more important job, requiring a full system.”

For Jones, the request represented a vote of confidence in both the rapid development of his own company and the investment he made in TW AUDiO just 2 years before. “Up until we bought that system 2 years ago we were doing smaller gigs. We had some line array but we didn’t use that much of it,” he explained. “So I was looking to invest in a new PA and from the beginning, TW AUDiO were brilliant to work with. We were invited out to Germany to preview the system, meet the team and get an overall feel for the company. The guys at TW kindly agreed to send out a demo system for a few upcoming events so we could get some hands on, real world experience with the boxes outside the demo room. I couldn’t fault it. The rigging, sound quality and the support received was superb.”

Since then the company has expanded dramatically. “The contacts that we’ve made as a result of buying the TW AUDiO system and the support that we’ve received from the company itself have really taken us from one level to another,” stated Jones. “It’s meant that we can bid on bigger jobs and we can handle much larger projects quite comfortably. The significant improvement over our previous equipment also enables us to do much larger jobs with a more compact solution. The native cardioid S33 sub reduces the need for additional boxes to complete a cardioid sub array and the VERA36 boxes comes packed with substantial audio output, in a box that weighs less than 40kg. We don’t need to send out a truck’s worth of gear when actually a 3.5 tonne van will do it. That has made a significant difference in reducing our costs – savings which we can then forward on to clients.”

ASYS has capitalised on its investment with a string of regional events around the UK. “Just over the last few weeks we’ve done the Spalding Beer &

Music Festival with a flown system of 6 VERA36’s per side over S33 subs, plus our TW AUDiO M10 boxes for front fill and out fill in a challenging, extremely reverberant environment. There was also Bourne Festival, an outdoor event with no option to fly a system. Instead we deployed a ground-stacked system using VERA36 over S33 combined with BSX subs. At both events, we also implemented a complete TW AUDiO stage package, including C12 and C15 wedges, and T24N over B30’s for side fill.”

For Newark Festival, a larger solution was required to meet client expectations, while overcoming the site’s unique challenges. “The site isn’t very wide but it requires significant throw, and we needed to provide a solution to match that of previous years. Delay towers were previously used but they were no longer an option,” Jones explained. In addition, the festival’s location in the heart of Newark-on-Trent meant that noise restrictions had to be strictly observed. “We were right next to the town centre,” he continued, “and there was rear offsite noise to consider as well because there are housing estates not too far from the back of the stage.”

The solution comprised left-right hangs of 12 per side VERA36’s flown beneath 2 S33’s subwoofers per side. “The S33’s added some low end extension to the bottom end of the arrays - VERA36 already goes low but the S33’s just gave the arrays a little bit extra,” said Jones. “For the groundstacked sub configuration we had 6 central BSX subwoofers, set up in 2 sets of 3 in cardioid format with 2 front facing and one rear facing.

Moving wider from centre, we then spaced four stacks, each comprising 2 S33 cabinets per side.”

6 VERA20 enclosures were stacked on top of the subs to provide front-fill, while elsewhere on the site, 3 VERA10 cabinets served as HF fills for the VIP sponsors area, where a further 2 S33 subs added low-end extension. The entire system was powered by Lab.gruppen PLM12K44 amplifiers with Lake LM 44 FOH control.

“With 2 hangs of VERA36, we achieved what had previously been done with a much larger system and it still sounded impressive, even at a distance,” said Jones. “The VERA36 gives incredible definition and clarity without sounding harsh even when running at high SPL. The low frequency response of the dual 10-inch drivers in each box produces a smooth, clear and powerful low-mid range. In the sub range, the S33 / BSX sub array was incredibly punchy, yet defined and controlled with some of the best rear rejection we have heard.”

Most importantly, the client agreed: “After 2 days on the festival site we were absolutely thrilled with the coverage,” declared LHG’s Rupert DooganHobbs. “It’s a nice system with very smooth audio and it’s exactly right for the crowd we wanted, so we’re very pleased.” www.newarkfestival.co.uk www.twaudio.de 86

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ELECTROBEACH

ELECTROBEACH Funktion-One impressed with perfect PA for all 4 stages at France’s biggest electronic music festival.

For 3 days in mid-July, the port town of Le Barcarès on France’s southern coast became the focus for EDM-lovers from across Europe and beyond with the return of Electrobeach.

Hailed as the country’s largest electronic music event, the festival drew close to 100,000 people over the course of the long weekend, there to soak up the sounds of more than 100 DJs performing across 4 stages on the town’s beachfront.

Having built a reputation as the biggest and best, Electrobeach could be forgiven for resting on its laurels and riding the waves of its reputation. Instead - ever striving for the ultimate festival experience - organisers this year undertook a first for French festivals by placing its faith entirely in Funktion-One. While the UK manufacturer’s Vero system took the headline position on the main stage, Evo sound systems provided audio for the other 3.

In truth, this was far from a blind leap of faith with the town of Le Barcarès itself a stakeholder in the festival, all elements of the event had to be put out to public tender. Ultimately, it wasn’t Funktion-One’s reputation for top quality sound that sealed the deal, but rather the bare facts of each system’s technical capabilities. Not least the ability to deliver precisely focused coverage.

As the festival’s Technical Manager, Jean Denis Rolland, explained: “It’s very important to have good sound, but we are in France and in France it’s very different. We work for a town so we must work with a public offer - it’s impossible to impose a brand in France. This year we have chosen the sound system of Funktion-One, but it’s not chosen for the brand but for the coverage. It offers the best coverage and we chose the system for this.”

In addition to this, the sheer efficiency of the system was a factor.

Indeed, it would later transpire that power draw for the main stage was reduced to a tenth of that required the previous year.

Though ultimate responsibility for the audio provision fell to Concept Group - a Funktion-One partner based in the south of France - the huge scale of the event meant additional support was required. In response, Concept Group drafted in Solution One from Montpellier, Remote from Paris and Think! AV from the Netherlands to provide the necessary equipment

and expertise needed to fulfil the demands of the festival. Further augmenting this super-group of suppliers was a crack team from FunktionOne HQ, including company co-founders and R&D masterminds Tony Andrews and John Newsham.

A driving force behind the adoption of Vero on the main stage was the organiser’s desire to avoid the use of delay towers, and so allow unobstructed views of the blazing, multi-screen visuals. The impressive throw achievable with Vero allowed the team to deliver good quality coverage all the way back to the huge landlocked steel boat that sits on the beach some 130m away.

Vero is comprised of a 3 x 15 mid-bass horn-loaded cabinet along with dedicated 90° and 60° mid-high - elements that can be configured in any arrangement to perfectly suit any given environment. While it shares the same easy-to-deploy convenience that has made line arrays so popular, this large format vertical array operates on a completely different set of acoustic principles - providing distinct advantages that were brought in to play for Electrobeach.

The ability to precisely tailor Vero was especially advantageous given the location of the festival’s Main Stage, as Newsham explained. “The festival site is surrounded by residential buildings, which we want to keep the sound away from as much as we can,” he said. “Being a completely horn-loaded system means Vero has a very accurate coverage pattern - we can control our output and keep it focussed on the audience, rather than it spreading to other parts of the environment.”

Vero’s Lambda rigging system also proved its worth during set-up, when it became clear that slap-back from the landlocked ship would be an issue.

Adjustments were carried out without having to drop the array in, allowing the team to quickly raise the system and angle it down slightly to ensure minimal reflection. The Vero system loaded into a single artic and only required 4 flying points, whereas in previous years up to 16 rigging points were needed.

As well as behaving completely naturally (with no onboard system EQ), the Main Stage sound was unaffected by the coastal wind. “We’re noticing that, despite the site being really windy, we’re not getting any phasing problems because it’s not summing in the near field,” explained Andrews.

The Main Stage hangs each comprised 5 V60 (mid-high loudspeaker providing 60° horizontal), 6 V315 (mid-bass horn loaded loudspeaker) and 88

ELECTROBEACH

Below: Funktion-One Co-Founder, Tony Andrews.

8 V90 (mid-high loudspeaker providing 90° horizontal coverage). 8 stacks of V221 subs (32 in total) were spread evenly across the front of the stage, along with a column of 8 V132 super subs. 4 Evo 7TH were used as out fills and 2 Evo 7 for centre fills. Vero was powered by 22 Lab.gruppen PLM 20K44 touring amplifiers.

“The audio results are pretty spectacular,” noted Andrews. “Last night when we’d finished tuning the bass set up, John said he thought it’s probably the best he’s ever heard it - and I’d be inclined to agree. The stereo picture is just fantastic.”

Yannick Hoogerwerf of Think! AV concurred. “It sounds brilliant,” he said.

“The stereo image is the widest I’ve ever heard on a PA and the bass is really deep and firm because of the F132’s - basically we have a 5-way system. It’s really even and it throws a lot further than any of my expectations.”

Paul Meskel of project leader Concept Group felt Vero had delivered on its promise. “It’s the first time I’ve worked with Vero and I really like it. The low ends are really punchy and tough, and it’s got so much projection - I really love the sound of this PA. The good thing about the system is you can play really loud, but the sound is never aggressive at all. It’s really pleasant to hear. There’s a lot of pressure - a lot of impact, especially in the low end but it stays clear and not aggressive at all.”

For Chris Hawkes of Solution One, the response to Vero’s French debut surpassed his own high expectations. “We’ve had it up for a couple of days and we’ve had amazingly positive reactions,” he commented. “Everyone’s confident that we’re going to give the crowd a new experience. Certainly, the music we’ve been feeling in the soundchecks has been something that I’ve never experienced before.”

Though Hawkes was already well acquainted with Funktion-One’s hands-on approach to projects like this, for others on site the direct access to support from Newsham and Andrews was a bonus. “Personally, I’ve been working with Tony and John for 25 years,” noted Hawkes. “But today on a festival like this, all the crew that have never met John and Tony before are absolutely amazed how the bosses of Funktion-One are coming here and getting involved on every level, sharing their knowledge and finding every possible way of making the thing as perfect as imaginable.”

Emily Watson - Digital Design Engineer at Cadac - was also onsite throughout the setup and event days. A CDC six was specified as the main sound console. Watson said: “There was a second console on the main stage but there was a noticeable audio difference when ever this was in play - the stereo image shrank the moment it was used. The Cadac stole the show and was used for almost all of the DJs. “Vero has impressively clear and defined bass response which the Cadac complimented nicely with its clarity. The stereo image was massive and felt open and far wider than the size of the Vero it was coming out of.”

Watson was also impressed by how intuitive the CDC six proved to be.

She said: “The FOH engineers were new to the console but required little instruction or training to get mixing. I stayed close to offer support and answer questions when needed, but found they were quite happy working with the CDC six without too much input from me.

“It’s designed for simplicity and ease, and it showed that at this festival.

Some engineers were unsure about having the CDC six at Electrobeach,

especially on main stage, but after hearing the console they became curious and we had both Think! AV engineers and Concept engineers working on it.

They were impressed with the audio quality, and the console received many complements from different people among the crew.”

For the remaining 3 stages, Funktion-One Evo systems energised each audience. On the Techno Stage, the system comprised of 2 stacks of 3 Evo 7T / Evo 7TH / Evo 7TL-215, and 2 Evo 7TH in fills. 10 F121 and 4 F132 were used in an asymmetric combination giving seamless and high impact bass coverage.

Meanwhile, over on the Hardstyle Stage, 4 Evo 7Ts, 2 Evo 7THs, 2 F315’s, 12 F121’s and 6 BR221’s were on duty. PSM318 monitors were deployed on both stages which was most appreciated by the DJ’s For the Beach Stage, 4 Evo6Es, 4 Evo6ELs, 8 F124’s and PSM12 Monitors with Minibass 212 were used. Notably, the F124’s were deployed as a mono centre bass stack, set up in an inverted delta array - another example of how the Funktion-One team were able to add its expertise to the project.

So called for the D-shaped configuration of the boxes, the delta array provides a wider coverage than would otherwise be achieved. Stacked 4 subs wide, the centre section is horn-loaded by the outside boxes - the horn is extended using the sides of the outer boxes. “We then do an end-fire with the outer boxes - delaying them to be in time with the centre boxes,” explained Newsham. “By changing the delay very slightly, we can adjust the angle of dispersion of the array. We’ve got quite a nice short, wide area, so we’ve gone for a bit more spread.”

At the end of 3 full-on days of festival action, both Vero and Evo had delivered on the promises made in tender; achieving a French first and providing further proof that alternatives still exist for those willing to look beyond the party line.

Photos: 432 Productions www.electrobeach.com www.funktion-one.com

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EDINBURGH FRINGE

EDINBURGH FRINGE As has become an annual tradition, Eaton Zero 88 consoles were out in force across venues at this year’s Edinburgh Fridge with the full range of systems distributed across 300+ venues in the city. The Eaton team were also on site providing comprehensive training and support.

Over 100 Eaton Zero 88 lighting consoles from the new award winning FLX range and a variety of legacy products were distributed across the 300+ venues running in and around the city during The Edinburgh Fringe. The company has once again been at the forefront of offering comprehensive onsite training and support.

At least 25 of Eaton’s new Zero 88 FLX S range consoles were involved, just 9 months after the desk was launched. The desk has been designed for quick and intuitive control of moving lights and LED fixtures for this size and style of shows. In fact, Eaton enjoyed a bumper Fringe year in the lighting control department, with the Zero 88 brand’s trusty consoles running lighting for a diversity of venues - from the highest profile to the most exclusive and secretive.

Myriad venues, from the vaguely conventional to the truly idiosyncratic, popped-up as show spaces across Edinburgh for the duration, while numerous well-known established theatres and concert halls come alive with the buzz and excitement of the world’s largest arts festival.

Zero 88 consoles and control packages were featured at some of the busiest and most popular venues, with FLX range products at Assembly, Underbelly, Gilded Balloon, Summerhall and Pleasance, all of which offer multiple performance spaces throughout the festival.

There has been a big push for venues to switch to more LED lighting where possible, with all the extra creativity it offers LDs, plus additional powerful parameters like colour mixing that need to be easily controlled.

All of this was perfect for the FLX S’s range being a control platform of choice.

Eaton’s Jon Hole and Edward Smith took to the technical front-line in the run up to the festival opening, giving face-to-face training and support to an estimated 150 technicians and operators as well as 25 dedicated console training sessions across the city.

The in-situ training is something for which Zero 88 has become renowned. “We all love the Fringe Festival for many reasons including the lively atmosphere together with the ambition and excellence of so many of the works,” stated Jon Hole, adding, “It’s greet to see the consoles pushed to new levels by multiple lighting designers and programmers from all sectors of the industry with assorted levels of knowledge and experience.”

At least 2 major UK rental companies invested in new FLX S consoles to service their Edinburgh shows. Bristol headquartered SLX, that purchased 9 FLX S consoles, and Hawthorn, that bought a mixture of 6 FLX and FLX S consoles.

For Martin McLachlan, Head of Lighting at Assembly, it’s the, “flexibility, ease of use and familiarity for incoming companies” that makes Eaton a goto console choice for Edinburgh Fringe. Not only that but the desks ability to deal with, “complex programming without confusing options for less advanced users” made them an ideal choice.

Assembly also hosted a range of performances for the 2018 Edinburgh Jazz Festival immediately prior to the Fringe, for which a Zero FLX console was used in its Picolo venue, included by Lighting Designer Tarzan Wood for American blues singer Earl Thomas.

Brian Hutchison, Production Manager for Summerhall stated that the most important lighting control considerations for Fringe events are, “reliability, ease of use and the excellent Eaton customer training and support”. He thought the Zero 88 consoles were, “stable and user friendly” and that the FLX S range has a “powerful feature set and a superior theatre cue stack compared to most others”. He continued: “But more importantly

it’s Eaton’s support and training which is vital for events like Edinburgh Fringe. We have numerous users of various abilities and very little room for error or downtime.”

Dan Last, Customer Service Senior Account Handler for lighting supplier White Light commented: “At a Fringe event you need a product that a wide number of people will be familiar with and that is easy to learn and use for those who aren’t, and of course it has to be cost effective for the venue provider.”

Jon Hole observed: “It’s a great testament to the flexibility, power and true user-friendliness of the FLX S range to see them in so many places, and we really pride ourselves on going that proverbial ‘extra mile’ and assisting and advising anyone using our kit how to maximise and get the most out of the tools at their fingertips!

“Every year we’re taken aback by the scale, enthusiasm and creativity shown throughout Edinburgh by designers, performers and technicians.

We’re here to make their jobs as easy as possible - and we seem to be succeeding judging by the great feedback and seeing some venues after several years now returning to Zero 88 for their lighting control due to the intuitiveness, feature set and reliability.”

Key reasons making Zero 88 consoles a success in Fringe-like environments are the impressive power in an expediently sized and small footprint package; the speed and swiftness of programming - including having all the patented colour information on-board ready to be applied to LED rigs - as well as being exceptionally quick and easy for people to pick up and learn, even if it’s the first time they are using a Zero console!

So Eaton’s Zero 88 continued to tick multiple Fringe Festival production boxes and embrace a truly world class event with much enthusiasm and zest as well as provide some of the best practical working solutions for lighting control. www.edfringe.com www.zero88.com

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TALL SHIPS FESTIVAL

TALL SHIPS FESTIVAL Hippotizer Karst Media Servers helped create stunning light shows, delivering cutting-edge projection mapping to huge crowds attending Tall Ships celebrations.

Marking the fifth time Liverpool has hosted a Tall Ships event, extensive celebrations were very much captain’s orders.

Stage Sound Services, complete with Green Hippo tech, was on duty to deliver a brace of stunning projection-mapped light shows. The 2 events brought the power of projection mapping to huge audiences. In Birkenhead’s Hamilton Square, the Stage Sound Services team, working with the creative team at Illuminos, used a pair of Hippotizer Karst Media Servers to help map a spectacular show - inspired by Birkenhead’s people, places and history - on to the classically-designed Town Hall.

The same team also put on another supreme example of projection mapping in Liverpool’s Cunard Building. Both light shows formed key parts of the weekend’s celebrations, including being promoted as lead attractions; ones around which further activities - such as circus activities and street food offerings - rotated.

For both events the creative teams used Hippotizer Media Servers to control projections on to the buildings. Hippotizer also played back audio for the Birkenhead event’s sound team, and in Liverpool it chased timecode that was sent from sound, syncing the audio with the pyrotechnics. For both shows, the teams used SSS Midi Trigger Boxes to control the timeline in the machines.

“We chose Hippotizer for a few reasons, primarily the smooth playback the engine provides, especially the frame blending,” said Richard Gilbert of Stage Sound Services. “In many other systems, when tackling such

large scale projection including pans across buildings, you see the content jump across. The Hippotizer blends each frame together, meaning you get smooth playback where you would otherwise get that jump in content. We also like the visualiser within Hippotizer, as it means we can program a show in the light without the need for expensive multi-views. The customisable GUI is a real bonus, allowing you to see exactly what you want to see, and remove what you don’t. The support from Ned, Ryan and the rest of the Green Hippo team in London is also great; approachable, knowledgeable and always keen to make sure that the system works for our needs.”

The resulting video and light shows delivered impressive additions to the now traditional celebrations that accompany any Tall Ships event, wowing not just attendees, but also gaining extensive column inches in newspaper reports, as well as widespread online and TV video coverage. www.green-hippo.com

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TOMORROWLAND

TOMORROWLAND SHOWTEX A familiar face at the annual dance festival, ShowTex supplied red StretchVelours for the Pussy Lounge, a brand new in-the-round stage reusing the famous carrousel of last year’s Main Stage.

To make sure the circus theme was respected, ShowTex added more velvet drapes to finish the 2 ceilings of the carrousel, spanning a 7m and 10m in diameter, respectively.

Furthermore ShowTex supplied tonnes of black Juncko and Molton, the perfect flame retardant fabrics for temporary stage skirting. While these fabrics are typically used for big surface masking they remain rather invisible to the untrained eye. But rest assured, each stage at the festival featured ShowTex fabrics.

“No matter the size of the project, the ShowTex team is always thinking ahead enthusiastically and 100% commitment to get the production to the next level,” commented Bart Denies, Technical Producer at Tomorrowland.

“The word ‘no’, simply isn’t in their vocabulary, no matter how complex the challenge. This is what makes it great to work with ShowTex. You just know everything will turn out just fine when you’re sitting around the table together and this year’s in-the-round Pussy Lounge stage is a clear example of this.” www.tomorrowland.com www.showtex.com

PIONEER PRO AUDIO The famous B-EAT Restaurant returned to Tomorrowland in 2018. Together with Las Vegas chefs, Tomorrowland’s DJs transformed an indoor restaurant into a tasteful journey for all the senses. Lasting an hour, visitors got to experience a private DJ session with appetisers and a special B-EAT cocktail. With 4 shows a day a total of 12,000 got to enjoy this high class experience throughout the festival.

KICK APS returned to the festival again to provide the area with a Pioneer Pro Audio XY Series for the B-EAT area. KICK APS’ Karel Geukens discussed the company’s long history with the festival.

“We’ve been with Tomorrowland since the very beginning,” he began. “This year, preparations time was very short with Tomorrowland already deciding the placement of each of the speakers. This meant we were coming in to make minor adjustments on site.” He went on to explain that as important as CAD drawing were in the prep they are often “short on detail” and he prefers to be onsite to make the final adjustments to ensure the system

sounded its best.

The left and right hangs within the space were made up of 3 XY-3B’s and 3 XY-218HS. Front fills consisted on 2 XY-2’s and 2 XY-218HS. Finally for the DJ booth KICK APS opted for 2XY-122 and 2 XY-215S. Control came courtesy of a DiGiCo SD9. “The desk did some of the processing and multi band compression as the DJs tend to overload the LA EQ through the use of effects and gains,” commented Geukens. Driving the sound system was a selection of Powersoft amplifies including X4’s for the XY-3Bs with K3’s for monitors and K10’s for the XY-218HS. “The main challenge this year was getting the equipment into the venue,” reminisced Geukens. “We had to use a 6m staircase to load 135kg subs and with width of the stairs was only 1m! So there was only one solution - bring in a crane.”

He concluded by giving his thoughts on the system. “KICK APS history with Pioneer Pro Audio date back to the early 2000’s when they brought out the CDJ 500. We have collaborated ever since. Pioneer made their speakers for dance festivals and clubs - they were the perfect choice for this event.” www.pioneerproaudio.com www.kick.be 92

Power to perform XY-3b Make an impression with the XY-3B, designed to deliver a coherent & natural sound for large venues and outdoor events.

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26/06/2018 15:37

2000TRESS

2000TREES The independent 10,000-capacity rock festival, took the plunge this summer to become 100% cashless for its 11th edition partnering with PlayPass.

The prospect of a cash-free site seems to have been as daunting as it is appealing to the UK’s festival industry, which has been highly tentative to date in its use of RFID technology. In contrast, many other countries across Europe have accepted the PlayPass technology as standard.

“We decided to make the leap this year and I’m delighted to say it’s everything we’d hoped for,” enthused 2000trees Festival Organiser Andy Rae following the event moving to a cashless system. “We spent a lot of time considering how it could affect our festival and spoke to numerous RFID providers before concluding that PlayPass had the most to offer. You can’t underestimate the convenience it adds to the customer experience not having to worry about bringing cash and keeping it safe.The tech helped render queues non-existent, allowing people to spend more time actually enjoying the festival.”

Rae did admit that debuting as a cashless festival is still a relatively bold move in the UK. However, with over 450 million global users of Apple Pay and contactless payments making up for 58% of all transactions in the retail industry, he and the 200trees team felt confident. “It’s now a part of everyday life, so it feels more organic that festivals and events will follow suit,” he commented. “But it’s important that moving over to the technology enhances the experience of both the traders and visitors of the festival and does not affect our festival culture. ” One of the key elements to the system’s success was prior to the festival, when ticket buyers were encouraged to register their account, which they could top up in the months prior. Spreading their festival finance helps explain the increased customer spend at the event. PlayPass supplied the online top-up platform and supported by the proactive communication from 2000trees, offering incentives of extra cash bonuses. Collectively, 80% of attendees registered and loaded cash onto their wristbands before arriving on site.

The RFID system also allowed festival-goers to view their balance after each transaction as well as view their purchase history. PlayPass deployed over 100 point of sale terminals across 55 outlets at 2000trees.

One perception, which seems to be unique to UK market, is that traders will resist a move to cashless, but 2000trees painted a very different story.

Simon Cullum from Poffertjes, seller of traditional Dutch pancakes at many UK festivals, declared that, “going cashless has been a revelation. I don’t have to worry about storing cash, miscounting it or taking it to the bank.

Most importantly, the system has reduced my anxiety about theft.”

Recent studies of 200 global events that have converted to PlayPass’ cashless solutions, have seen an average increase in visitor spend by 23% per event as a result. Alongside providing data on revenue and

consumption, a wealth of new business intelligence insights are available through the system, where organisers can monitor and understand every detail of the event in real-time. The organiser can also analyse peak times and compare this to the event schedule.

PlayPass have flourished across the globe - and now gaining a growing presence in the UK - by offering a solution that combines the resilience of an offline system. As such, its client events can utilise its powerful capabilities like automatic topup, online loading and a recently introduced ability to bundle cashless credits with other pre-event purchases (such as beer packs and portable phone charging) in a single online order basket. Behind this, they have the peace of mind that, if the internet fails or the power goes down, all of the bars and traders can carry on trading without any risk of disruption.

Steve Jenner, leading PlayPass’ business development in the UK and Ireland, explained: “At PlayPass, we have eliminated the risk of system failure as a possibility because - unlike with an online system that relies entirely on 1 or 2 connections to a cloud server - there is no single point of failure on which our whole platform rests. The very worst case scenario with us is that an individual scanner or RFID wristband gets damaged or lost, and that can be replaced by our on-site response team in a matter of moments.

Alongside this, PlayPass is constantly reinvesting back into the technology to ensure we’re always improving our capabilities and the system itself.

Unlike most of our competitors, we build and constantly refine all of our software in-house, so we can be more responsive to our client needs and innovate faster in line with the rapidly evolving events market.

Alongside PlayPass’ constant enhancements, other benefits of using RFID technology and becoming totally cashless include removing the need of cash on site which makes a significant saving on security and logistics.

Visitors have the option to receive a refund after the event, or use their remaining funds towards future tickets.

While some cash-using festivals and outdoor events have made the headlines with excessive bar queues this summer, 2000trees by contrast experienced a major reduction in its bar queuing times - another notable benefit of the system.

The festival’s successful debut as a cashless event has shown that it is a viable - and profitable - option for festivals who want to embrace the future by implementing cashless solutions. Steve Jenner concluded: “2000trees have shown that, when you approach RFID and cashless in the right way, you can achieve incredible results in year one with your audience and traders fully embracing it. This is a landmark moment for the UK’s independent festival sector, we are very proud to have been a part of it and can’t wait to build on this positive start to scale great heights going forward.” www.twothousandtreesfestival.co.uk www.playpass.be 94

WOMAD FESTIVAL

WOMAD FESTIVAL This year’s festival offered an immersive audio experience thanks to the partnership with d&b audiotechnik’s Soundscape.

d&b audiotechnik added a striking dimension to its rollout of Soundscape - the next-generation audio processing platform that combines object-based mixing and room emulation. The audio specialists partnered with World of Music Arts & Dance (WOMAD) Festival on a dedicated 900sqm marquee stage and arena. The d&b Soundscape Stage used the remarkably eclectic programme of world music artists ranging from bands and singer songwriters to DJs and field recordists to reveal the versatility and the detail that the system commands.

Considering its range of artists who are often happy to play their sets on bamboo nose flutes, WOMAD has never shied away from technology. That’s because it was very much the brainchild of Peter Gabriel, the Dumbledore of hi-tech progressive rock and chromium-plated chart pop. It grew out of the sylvan tendrils of his West Country recording retreats, and by the time his famous Real World Studios opened at the end of the ‘80s WOMAD - the organisation, the record label, the festival - was established as a global outreach of this audio cathedral.

To make sure that Soundscape’s WOMAD debut went smoothly, the sound engineering services of Ben Findlay were secured. Findlay, now much in demand as a live sound engineer, learned his craft as a studio engineer at Real World and later on tour with Gabriel himself, among many other leading lights from Simply Red to Sting.

This was Findlay’s first encounter with Soundscape as a completely new live sound mixing paradigm now making its way in the realest of worlds and the toughest of acoustic conditions.

“It was immediately clear,” said Findlay, “That Soundscape has the ability to place each musician in the mix exactly as you see them on stage.

But the most striking thing was that this localisation works for everyone in the audience, wherever they’re standing. Normally you have to stand right in the centre to have equal coverage from both sides and to get that sense that it’s coming from the middle. Step even a metre either side and it all starts to drift to that side.

“With Soundscape, if you pan something into the middle of the array of speakers across the front - in this case 7 V7P point-source - you still get that

sense of central localisation even you’re extreme downstage right, or left.”

This describes the 180° benefit of Soundscape’s object-based signal processing and mixing, but WOMAD also presented an opportunity to exploit its 360° dimensions and the potential to create what is increasingly being described as an immersive listening experience for the audience.

To achieve this, a ring of 22 Y10’s was placed around the boundaries of the marquee.

Findlay described the workflow: “Every channel of audio that comes into the console goes out discretely to the d&b DS100 Signal Engine which houses a 64 x 64 signal matrix where it becomes a sound object,” he said.

“In our case 48 input channels from the stage box became 48 objects and you can then use the interface to position each of these objects wherever you want in the sound field. It was fun and fascinating to be able to pull objects off the stage and fly them around the room, but for this context the most artistically satisfying effect was to select certain more ethereal sound sources, add reverb to those and feed the returns into the 360° space while keeping them dry off the stage. You get a lot of clarity at the front while establishing a really enveloping ambience.”

Findlay also found that it was quick and intuitive to observe the line-up of each act as it took to the stage, and make adjustments within Soundscape to connect the mix with the immediate visual impression of the musicians in situ - a particularly useful feature in a festival situation like this where the kaleidoscope of audio-visual impressions is such a rich part of the experience. “You can very quickly group the channels/objects too, enabling you to move a whole group - such as a drum kit - around the stage according to where it was set up. By the end of the weekend I was entirely comfortable with this approach.”

WOMAD has a very discerning audience. So much so, that d&b audiotechnik’s Bill Brooks and John Taylor conducted an informed and engaging presentation about the Soundscape concept every afternoon in a break between the acts. But you don’t have to be Leonardo Da Vinci to appreciate this renaissance. “We had a lot of very positive reactions from people,” Findlay said. “Even though you don’t expect them to follow all the technicalities. And I found the opportunity to be so precise about how things sat in the mix very rewarding. It sounded really, really good.” www.womad.co.uk www.dbaudio.com 95

LOVEBOX

LOVEBOX This year, the eclectic festival moved to its new home in Gunnersbury Park.

SSE Audio were on site to ensure a painless transition.

The brainchild of legendary DJs Groove Armada, Lovebox can trace its roots back to the London party scene of the early noughties. What started as an album and a one-off party in an old strip club off Tottenham Court Road grew into the eclectic festival that it is today. Earlier this year, Lovebox announced it would be making a move from East to West, from its former home in Victoria Park across the capital to Gunnersbury Park near Acton. This would be the first large scale music festival ever to be held at Gunnersbury Park. As with many urban festivals one of the key concerns from the local authority, who licence the event, was the issue of off-site noise, with the park surrounded on all sides by residential properties. Strict offsite levels were set and acoustic consultants Vanguardia were employed to measure and ensure compliance.

Commenting on the weekend, SSE Project Manager, Miles Hillyard, said: “This was pretty much the gig they said couldn’t be done! From the outset people were sceptical that we would be able to achieve even 96dB at FOH without breaking the noise licensing. Figures across the weekend revealed we were achieving as high as 103dB at FOH and were comfortably within the off-site limits - proof that we got our calculations right long before we got to site.”

Although according to Hillyard it wasn’t just about the numbers. He explained: “The design also gave us a great sounding system, confirmed from the feedback we’ve had from the FOH engineers. The sub bass design, while influenced by the licence requirements, had excellent tonality with virtually no phase cancellation.”

Hillyard designed all the audio systems for the main, second and third stages at Lovebox. “From initial site visits, it was obvious that the close proximity of residential property was going to influence our system design - an audio footprint with a sharp drop off within the boundaries of the site was essential.” SSE presented 3 different designs using systems from 3 different manufacturers - each with its own merits. Promoter MAMA Festivals had every confidence in SSE as a supplier, so much so it left the final decision down to SSE. “We decided to use L-Acoustics K2 as the main hangs on each of the three stages,” explained Hillyard. “Our experience has resulted in a huge knowledgebase of how the different elements of L-Acoustics K-Series interact and we were confident that the K2 was the right option.”

On the main stage SSE’s system utilised 14 L-Acoustics K2 line array cabinets per side with outhangs and infill of L-Acoustics KARA. Hillyard produced a specific sub bass design, featuring L-Acoustics KS28 cabinets

configured as an end-fire sub array. Four delays of L-Acoustics KARA extended the stage’s footprint with minimal overspill.

Stages 2 and 3 also used main hangs of L-Acoustics K2, with a mixture of KARA and KIVA II for infill. Both these stages were in marquees, although the second stage also required delays of L-Acoustics KARA that were erected outside of the marquee. Hillyard commented: “We opted for K2 over K1 because the cabinet has a shorter overall throw - ideal in this application. The K-Series, from K1 right down to KIVA II, all have similar tonal characteristics, so you know you can mix and match to get the design you require.”

Covering the 3 largest stages meant SSE Hire could better manage the noise levels across the festival as a whole. Miles explained: “We have LA Network Manager monitoring each system, hosted on PCs in the FOH DriveRacks. For Lovebox we installed remote desktop software enabling us to monitor and make adjustments to all three systems from a central point.

Rather than resorting to comms or mobile phones we had a holistic view that enabled us to make adjustments where necessary in real time.”

The main stage system came in for particular praise from the engineers who passed through the FOH tent over the course of the weekend. Gerry Parchment, Engineer for Friday night headliner, Skepta commented: “Thanks to SSE, the crew and everyone involved for an enjoyable day. The (system) design was perfect in that it let the public enjoy their day out - we can all take solace in a job well done.” Andy Boo from Skepta’s production added: “Thanks to you all for your help in making Friday’s show a great success - Skepta says this is the best show he has done.”

Headliner on Saturday was US rapper and DJ Childish Gambino. The artist’s FOH engineer Kenneth Williams was also delighted with how the weekend had panned out: “SSE had a great crew on site and we were well looked after at FOH by System Tech Adam Walker. The whole event was a technically enjoyable experience and I would gladly mix on the same system with the same personnel again.”

SSE Audio MD John Penn concluded: “This project shows that skill and experience are as important as having access to the right systems in order to achieve the best results. Features such as flying the main hangs lower, opting for K2 rather than K1; all this is down to the experience of our Hire department. It’s also about attention to detail - L-Acoustics Soundvision is only a tool, it doesn’t design the system for you. It’s about having the knowledge of what will and won’t produce the right results, coming up with a design and then painstakingly fine tuning it until the prediction software produces the desired results. It’s all about the public’s experience and at Urban festivals that’s got as much to do with the people who don’t attend as those that do.” www.loveboxfestival.com www.sseaudiogroup.com 96

| I N S TA L L AT I O N S | G R O U P | H I R E | W I G W A M | S I G M A P R O D U C T S |

Capital Sound join forces with SSE Audio Group SSE Audio is pleased to welcome Capital Sound Hire to the Group.

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GRØN FESTIVAL

GRØN FESTIVAL Blackmagic Design took the lead for Video Design for the Danish festival.

Since the early ‘80s, Denmark’s Grøn Festival has not only entertained hundreds of thousands of people, but has also raised funds for, and awareness of muscular dystrophy across the country. Taking place each summer, Grøn tours the country for 10 days, with concerts taking place on consecutive dates. Multiple rigging, derigging and transporting for a 3 stage live production on a daily basis is no mean feat, especially when the same crew and artists deliver the festival’s entire schedule. Taking responsibility for video production at Grøn is live events specialist Deadlight Lydiksen. This year, the team’s brand new 12G-SDI OB van, built on a live production workflow featuring Blackmagic Design, took centre stage as the hub of the festival’s video production.

“Working from the van has enormous advantages for the Grøn set up, as we can pack up and drive straight off to the next venue,” explained Casper Warnich of Deadlight. “When we decided to upgrade our OB capabilities, we wanted a complete 12G workflow, as this would allow us to produce live content up to 2160p60. Doing so allows us to take on a huge variety of work; from big screen production, to live-streaming to corporate events.”

As well as portability being a big requirement for the festival, Warnich and team have to be able to handle a huge variety of video production requirements for the main stage’s 3 acts, and this is where the van’s ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K comes into its own.

“One of our bands has 4 big screens behind them on stage, as well as an LED trailer screen at the side of the stage,” he explained. “For their backdrop, we have multiple cameras filming each band member, and these feeds are all mixed together using the ATEM’s SuperSource feature, so that each of the 4 screens has each of the 4 band members in perfect sync. That just wouldn’t be possible without a multi source, multi effect switcher that also offers enough low latency for a festival environment.”

Warnich explained that the next band on the stage’s line up then requires extensive use of media servers, mixed with live camera feeds from Deadlight’s 3 URSA Broadcast live production cameras to deliver a live mix for its screens, as well as a standalone mix for the trailer screen.

“Each of the bands want to make sure their performance is as creative and immersive as possible for the crowd, so as a production team, we don’t want to restrict their vision,” he continued. “For us this means we are essentially moving quickly between very different and often complex video set ups, so the van’s flexibility is critical. The van’s infrastructure is routed through a Smart Videohub, and this means we can switch between inputs and outputs extremely quickly and easily, with no need to rewire in between acts.”

The 3 URSA Broadcasts are paired with Canon 40x ENG zoom lenses, with 2 positioned FOH and 1 as a pit camera. “Our ability to sync the URSA Broadcast via SDI is very useful, and makes it possible to achieve very low latency without having to deal with sync generators and additional cabling,” explained Warnich.

“We also have HD remote cameras in the set up for Grøn, so we’ve kept to a 1080p60 production for big screen coverage at all of this summer’s dates. But as the URSA Broadcast sensor has been designed for both HD and Ultra HD scenarios, we still have fantastic details, accurate skin tones and textures that really translate the excitement and intensity of the band’s performance, regardless of which format we work in.”

With the festival covering 650 miles over the 8 days, Grøn’s schedule is tough, however the solution is robust enough for Warnich and his 8 person production team to have complete confidence regardless of the venue. “Blackmagic’s move towards broadcast SMPTE fiber simplifies our approach by removing unnecessary weight and cost,” concluded Warnich.

“It also gives us talkback, tally and power through that one cable. Simplicity paired with flexibility helps us hugely when we are on the road touring.”

Photo: Patrick Hussey www.groenkoncert.dk www.blackmagicdesign.com 98

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IN PROFILE

MUSIC BANK: 25 YEARS IN THE MAKING 25 Years after it was first established, Music Bank unveils its brand-new facility in West London. TPi had a behind the scenes tour of the impressive new rehearsal venue during the glitzy launch event, which saw owner Trevor Horn perform some of his career highlights live…

Trevor Horn has arguably been one of the busiest men in music over the last few decades, with a career spanning over 30 years, he’s produced for many artists including Yes and Seal, and become the owner of Music Bank, Europe’s biggest backline vendor. Music Bank recently moved to a new state-of-the-art facility and rehearsal studio: SARM Music Bank in Acton, West London.

Established in 1994 when Horn was offered the chance to purchase the backline rental business from Hilton Sound. Although he already had the very successful SARM group he was keen to acquire a backline business as he joked he would finally have more gear than Hans Zimmer. His new business Music Bank was originally housed in Bermondsey South London.

As the company expanded the legendary North and South rehearsal studios were built on the top floor. The first rehearsal guests were Oasis and the initial success continued. Jimmy ‘Mac’ McNally, Director of Music Bank spoke to TPi. He said of the early days: “It was a different time, back then; we had some fun scenes, with every paparazzi in the country camped out in our car park hoping to get a glimpse of the acts coming through… and

yes we did see a few fridges and TVs go flying off the roof!” he laughed, in his trademark, deep Scottish twang.

Since then, Music Bank has become synonymous with high profile events, from the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, to iconic TV shows, festivals and as the official backline supplier to the 2012 Olympic Games. With backline rental and the rehearsal rooms complementing each other, it was also decided that the addition of dedicated storage cages would add to its offering. “These were not only for UK artists, but for many US acts wanting to hold a B-rig in the UK. We added cages throughout our time at the old haunt, and had almost 100 rigs in when we left,” Mac noted.

As demand grew, so did the need for a bigger space.

And, as to be expected with the longevity of any good business, Music Bank has enjoyed a strong team of employees at its backbone over the years. Mac’s own career started in audio and touring. Between tours he ended up at Hilton Sound – and transferred over to Music Bank when it open as such. When the previous manager left, Horn offered Mac the role.

Mac is assisted by Bookings Manager, Julie ‘Jules’ Sparrow.

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Opposite: Jimmy ‘Mac’ McNally, Director, with the office pups, Mya and Shiloh; Owner, Trevor Horn.

Sparrow, the woman with a now encyclopaedic knowledge of backline, started at Music Bank on its very first day as a General Assistant, as Mac explained: “We were so busy from the start, that within months, Jules found herself putting on a rental job, a Marshall full stack, for the Black Crowes. Since then, she’s never looked back and is now first port of call for most artists, PMs and festivals needing swift, friendly rental quotes. Including her annual mega-booking of Glastonbury’s plethora of stages, which we’ve been doing for 22 years.” Mac added “I really don’t know how she manages to do all that, keep all of us under control and bake care packages for her regular clients!”

Mac also gave mention to Operations Manager, Ian Whitehead, who oversees all logistics and backline needs, and his ‘King of the Pack’ JD. “JD not only runs the warehouse, but loves a good truck pack,” he laughed.

With a world-renowned studio space and busy backline company in full swing, moving to a new location isn’t always the most convenient move, but with spiralling rent, a building that was showing its age and a landlord that wouldn’t assist in upkeep, Horn, Mac and the dedicated team decided it was the way forward.

Mac found the perfect location, but it wasn’t easy: “A new location was such a hard one to get right. I must have looked at a hundred buildings before finding this one, which ticked all my boxes! I explained to Trevor that I wanted to create an environment and buzz like we had all those years ago – minus the flying TVs obviously! - yet improve on it by implementing all the experience and feedback we’ve gathered over the years to deliver the best service possible.”

Mac’s main aim was on returning the focus back to what they do best: “Backline, studios and storage – and with a touring supplies shop and a

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handful of offices and writing rooms; I wanted to make a facility that artists, cassettes. This in turn minimises the ‘dry throat’ effect which no singer bands and crew would genuinely be happy to see as a first stop on their wants to battle with during rehearsals,” Mac enthused. itinerary. It’s a hub for relaxation and for creativity to flow.”

With everything setup and installed, all that was left was to do was With the location sorted, the Music Bank team needed to decide exactly to welcome in the new space in style. If you’ve ever met Mac, you’ll know how to use the space. Mac consulted with key industry players to make he’s fond of a party, or 10. “We actually weren’t going to do anything for sure they were all on the same page. Designing the space is one thing, but the opening as it was bang in middle of our crazy summer period, with Mac found execution was a little more difficult. He continued: “Putting all festival acts in and out constantly. But, when Trevor offered to play and the ideas in place was another story! Firstly, I wanted to get the rehearsal get an amazing band together, I thought there would be no better way to rooms not only sounding great but to be aesthetically pleasing too. Apart showcase the new facility’s capabilities?” he asked. With extra help drafted from having to dig up the whole road to supply more power to the studios, in, including some helping hands from the new neighbours, the event grew each room had to have double height windows and oversized access into a real launch pad. “I called in some old and new friends including Eat doors with a short one level load-in from the huge To The Beat catering, SSE Audio and Colour Sound backline department, and from the loading bay.

Experiment to help put on and cater for the gig.

The rooms also have 2ft thick, floating engineered The latter 2 are basically our new neighbours walls as well as sustainable real oak flooring - who I knew wouldn’t complain about the noise,” throughout.” Walking around the space, it feels he joked. luxurious and well thought-out. With punk-inspired With the gig / opening party getting off to a artwork, spunky neon signs, well-stocked fridges great start in mid-July, it’s only cemented Mac’s “I have always said, one of the bright outlook on the future: “I have always said, and kitsch sofas, SARM Music Bank is certainly an inviting, rock ‘n’ roll destination. one of the greatest assets a company can have greatest assets a company On trend as ever, Mac also noted that a lot is its staff and I am incredibly lucky to have such can have is its staff and I am of the artists and clients had voiced concerns good, talented folks working in all positions here, regarding environmental issues. As well as using both the well-established and our newcomers. I incredibly lucky to have such Green Power, Music Bank encouraged a minimal think there’s no doubt over the years that Music good, talented folks working plastic, waste-free environment by introducing Bank has established its self as a legendary brand cold filtered water on tap, reusable water bottles within the industry, and with these new facilities in all positions here, both and 100% recyclable cups and lids. On top of this, up and running, I look forward to taking our the well-established and our the rooms also benefit from a German designed reputation and clients to the next level. Here’s to AC system that keeps the space at an ambient the past 25 years and of course, to the next!” newcomers.” temperature. “It’s designed to be very energy TPi Jimmy ‘Mac’ McNally efficient and almost silent, with the air return Photos: Music Bank being treated in a different way to the normal AC www.musicbank.org Director, Music Bank 102

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MARKET FOCUS

FOLLOWSPOTS In the past few years, a major development within the world of professional lighting has been the updating of the conventional followspot. From the advent of real-time tracking to the selection of popular remote followspot options, there is now a huge selection of gear to choose from. As well as expanding a lighting / show designer’s creative abilities, many of these solutions offer productions real health and safety benefits by keeping operators’ feet on the ground. TPi looks delves into the latest market offerings…

FOLLOW-ME Follow-Me started in 2010 as a simple, flexible and affordable way of using moving lights as followspots. The system improves on show safety and addresses designers’ requests for creative flexibility. Effectively, Follow-Me is a software package providing manual control to track a moving target and supports all standard moving light fixtures. The system is not reliant on the artist wearing sensors but depending on the size of event, uses a single or multi-camera input to provide a live image feed of the performance area.

The operators track target(s) using calibrated on-screen crosshairs.

Although the entire system operates from a single camera feed, multiple feeds can be integrated via a multi-system set-up. The software is designed for easy calibration and makes it possible to focus an unlimited amount of lighting fixtures in unlimited universes on 1 or multiple targets. Owing to lighting console integration, control of the fixtures can easily be shared between Follow-Me and the lighting desk with personality files already available for MA Lighting, High End Systems and ETC consoles. The lighting desk can set the maximum intensity with Follow-Me acting as an inhibitor.

Follow-Me can also integrate with PSN (Posi Stage Net) motion control to track targets and update fixture positions.

Users can track multiple targets simultaneously from 1 Apple Mac OS X operating system with the ability to assign an unlimited number of fixtures to desired targets. Although Follow-Me manufactures dedicated consoles, the option remains to use a regular mouse on a single target or multiple 3D mice if controlling multiple targets and a midi keyboard to map fixture parameters.

The system consists of a mouse, fader and camera mounting box, all of which is manufactured in the Netherlands. Using the mouse and fader consoles together allow the user to connect multiple targets in one system.

The PoE (Power over Ethernet) connected mouse, provides an ergonomic handle for prolonged usage and proportional control for 104

smooth and accurate targeting. Two encoders and buttons can easily be mapped to fixture or target parameters. Then the fader console connects via a 4 pin XLR to the mouse console and provides an additional 4 faders encoders and buttons for fixture parameter - camera function or z-height off-set functions. Finally, the Marshall camera can be hung and its controls accessed remotely using the Follow-Me camera mounting box and serial adaptor.

Follow-Me removes the limitations of traditional followspots. It gives designers the artistic freedom to position and use fixtures on static or moving trusses and change fixture assignments with each lighting cue. Over the past 2 years Follow-Me has been involved in an excess of 50 touring productions with major artists for renowned lighting designers. It’s cut its teeth on some of the largest European festivals and played its role on many TV studio and theatre productions. www.follow-me.nu

FOLLOWSPOTS

fallout hitting spot operators. Being separate from the fixture unit being operated also reduces potential heat issues which crews have had to contend with in the past.

Using remote-spotted fixtures on the main rig could also mean that crews would not have to spend time and considerable effort getting heavy, awkward and fragile followspot components up twisty narrow staircases or in small service lifts in some of the more traditional venues around the world.

For scenarios where creating FOH or arena followspot positions can mean removing seats, this no longer needs to happen so promoters will be happier.

With one RoboSpot BaseStation being able to control up to 12 fixtures, Robe has produced a stable and reliable method with potential to be a cost-efficient solution for any productions where the design includes multiple followspots.

The RoboSpot systems have recently been in action on Enrique Iglesias, The 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, The Little Mermaid, The Golden Melody Awards in Taipei and many more. www.robe.cz

ROBE ROBOSPOT Followspots done properly, from the calibration of the lightsource to the skill of the operator, has always been a bit of a black art. Far from ‘dumbing down’ this specialist discipline, the introduction of remote followspot systems brings it into a new, enhanced era. With the hope of giving lighting designers, directors and operators a far greater and more dynamic choice than before, the units also mean production managers and promoters have more safe, practical and cost-efficient options available.

Robe’s modular system is called RoboSpot and comprises several different elements that can be used in a variety of combinations to control up to 12 units of Robe’s newest fixtures including the BMFL range, MegaPointes, DL7 and DL4 series luminaires and Pointes.

At the heart of the remote-control element is the ergonomically designed, comfortable to operate RoboSpot BaseStation, which can be located anywhere in a venue or show space. The BaseStation has a large 15.6-inch HD touch screen display, so the operator observes the performance space from a first person perspective.

A live video picture relays visual and positional information from the MotionCamera(s) that are integral to or rigged adjacent to each individual remote spot fixture. The operator’s commands are instantly transferred to the luminaires via DMX signal with no lag. This means perfect motion tracking across the stage or performance area.

A full range of hand controls are available for operating the fixtures such as pan, tilt, intensity, focus and many others, all fully customisable for the operators’ benefit. Extra controls are also available through the touchscreen display, 4 programmable jog-wheels and 10 more fully configurable buttons, all designed to provide a bespoke user-experience.

The remote lighting desk retains control of all the internal parameters of the fixtures like intensity, gobos, colours and other effects. The console operator can also switch those fixtures designated to the remote followspot system between that and the main rig throughout the performance if they wish.

The benefits of running a remote followspot system like RoboSpot are numerous. From a creative angle, lighting designers can choose multiple fixtures - and different types of luminaires - to use for this role in the show; instead of being restricted to having 2, 4 or however many fixed FOH followspot positions, which is often the case with conventional set-ups.

They can now highlight an artist with multiple lightsources or with just 1 or 2 that are most appropriate when using a certain section of the stage or set, all helping in the creation of optimum drama and the most fabulous of stage looks. It also gives LDs the chance to use positions over the stage or in the air which might have previously been inaccessible, even for operated truss spots.

On the health and safety front, using a RoboSpot system means that operators don’t have to be at height in the rig throughout a show, creating a safer and much more comfortable working environment. Furthermore, pyro teams can deploy more fireworks without having to worry about the 106

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FOLLOWSPOTS

along with dimmers, focus, zoom and iris. On top of this there are 2 optional pot-metres and 7 buttons that, as standard, are used for the fixed colour wheel equivalent to 6 colour frames of a conventional followspot. These are adjustable as long as they are fitted in the fixed colour wheel of the fixture.

The 2 pot-metres is set to be CTO and magenta by default, but can be assigned any parameter of the fixture (or to a fader in the desk).

In the autumn of 2017, LiteCom Group supplied 10 systems to support the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in Shanghai. On this occasion the Light Designer team had all the colour control of the 10 Scenius Profiles used for the SpotDrive’s, giving the operators only pan, tilt and dimmer to control. The rest of the parameters were fixed, either in the desks or in the SpotDrive systems.

Using the MA Lighting grandMA2 as a console, it also makes it possible to operate multiple fixtures from the SpotDrive, setting up the rig in the MA 3D and controlling a StageMarker on the desk; essentially handing all of the control to the main desk instead of the spot operator. “This clearly takes a bit more programming but gives a lot of options to the show itself,” commented Møller.

In 2017, Bruno Mars’ LD team choose to take out 8 systems for the 24k Magic Tour around Europe, just as with the 2018 Asian leg of the same production. Also the 2017 edition of X-Factor Denmark used 3 systems and the 2018 Danish Eurovision qualification contest (Dansk Melodi Grand Prix). Furthermore a good selection of tours, such as Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and several Danish acts and theatres used the SpotDrive. http://litecom.dk

LITECOM SPOTDRIVE When LiteCom Group won the tender as the main supplier for the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, one of the demands for the production was a remote followspot operating system. At the time there were limited products that fitted the bill, resulting in LiteCom going back to basics to make a prototype of what is now in production as the SpotDrive.

Even before finalising the first system, the demand was removed from the tender and, for a while, the system was parked up in the company’s warehouse. But the company wanted a system that could operate any fixture on the market, integrate in a lighting system and be as ‘plug-andplay’ as possible. So, later that year, LiteCom continued in the development of the system, shipping out 4 of them on the final tour of Swedish rock group, Kent’s.

SpotDrive Project Manager, Jacob Møller told TPi: “The SpotDrive is a highly modified, yet very simplified, lighting console transmitting DMX512 protocol out. This gives the user a fair chance to meet more or less any requirement needed. When setting up the system you simply choose which parameters should be controlled directly on the fixture and what you want to trigger in the desk or not use at all.”

In most cases the SpotDrive will, as a minimum, control the pan and tilt,

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FOLLOWSPOTS

PRG GROUNDCONTROL The PRG GroundControl (GC) Followspot System was the world’s first followspot system that allowed operators to remotely operate a high output automated luminaire as a fixture from up to 2,000ft away. Designers now have total creative freedom to put followspots in places that were either previously unusable or involved complex rigging. With the GC Followspot System, the operator is on the ground so the physical footprint of the luminaire is significantly smaller then a conventional followspot. Due to this small footprint and low weight, followspots can now be placed in a wide variety of positions. For balcony rails, low trim venues, ground support on a lift of truss tower or place out over a video wall instead of in front.

All of theses options can be accomplished with the GroundControl without the extra safety equipment, personnel access gear and rigging typically associated with truss mounted followspots. The GroundControl Followspot System consists of 3 parts; a GC Spot Luminaire, a GC Truss Box, and a GC Followspot Controller.

The GC Spot Luminaire Family includes the GC Best Boy, Bad Boy, and now introducing the evolutionary GC Longthrow. The fixtures have a high definition camera mounted on the fixture that outputs HD-SDI at 1080p enabling the spot operator on the ground to see the stage as if they were sitting right next to the fixture. The on-board camera has an optical zoom, targeting reticle, and a night vision mode that enables operators to pick up a performer on a virtually black stage. All GroundControl Spot Luminaires have cross-fading CMY colour mixing along with multiple colour correction options giving designers the ultimate in flexibility to dial in and tune the GC Luminaire to their exact needs. Details about specific luminaire features can

be found on the individual GroundControl Luminaire datasheets.

Another addition to the GroundControl offering is the 4-Way Switch Box, which enables operators to switch between 4 fixtures with 1 controller.

Ideal for A/B stage, breakout rooms, backup fixtures, and many other configurations.

The GroundControl has recently been used on several tours including Britney Spears and Little Mix as well as several festivals including Wireless Festival and Barclaycard presents BST Hyde Park!. www.prg.com 110

NEW!

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FOLLOWSPOTS

BLACKTRAX The importance of an exceptional followspot system is often underestimated. That ethereal glow is often taken for granted until someone misses a cue, the light needs to pan-flip, or the subject decides to improvise and starts bouncing across the stage - preparation is everything.

The BlackTrax system tracks anything, or anyone tagged with the custom beacon, in 3D and 6D (positional and rotational data), translating it to pan and tilt values and instructing moving lights to follow the target, in any venue imaginable, except under exposed sunlight.

Unbounded creativity at zero cost to the quality of the production making it a great go-to for all production needs.

BlackTrax’s setup is easy. Hang the BlackTrax cameras around the space to be tracked, wave the calibration wand to collect data points, and autocalibration is done within minutes.

BlackTrax gives the user many customised options. For example, a tracking beacon can be used with either one or many LEDs (tracking points). It can also track the centre position calculated from multiple LEDs, creating a centroid. Tracking can be offset from a single LED or centroid to light only the chosen area to be lit, as the performer or object moves.

Benefits of the system include significant savings in equipment and personnel. With tracking, any moving light can be used as a followspot, so multiple spot positions can be used solo or in groups. This is important for use in venues that are small or with restricted space to have a followspot operator.

BlackTrax uses learning algorithms that analyse the tracked data from a subject’s stride, jog, and upper body movements. It then learns to suppress and refine the extra motion so the followspot will not shake with the person’s movements.

Behaviours, boundaries and trigger points can be programmed within a space and lets lights run continuously with automated controls from BlackTrax. If a performer crosses a point in space it can trigger an effect or new lighting cue.

Despite the ongoing debate about the labour lost to automation, it’s becoming more apparent that alternative solutions are required for increasing technical complexity and for projects that could place production personnel in precarious situations whilst expecting perfection.

The unending quest for creative uniqueness is easily realised in all productions that have partnered with BlackTrax and take advantage of the benefits its automation has to offer.

BlackTrax is supported by a valued partner and customer ecosystem and it has been deployed in over 8,000 shows globally and kept the spotlight in focus at the recent The Weeknd Starboy Tour, Queen + Adam Lambert Tour, Cirque du Soleil shows, as well as corporate events, product launches and opening ceremonies.

Photo courtesy of Stufish www.blacktrax.ca 112

SYSTEM CONTROLLER SAFETY FIRST - MADE IN GERMANY

UNBEATABLE: drives.............240 joysticks.............2 cue buttons..........5 touchscreen.....24“ conformity ......SIL 3

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04/09/2018 15:25

FOLLOWSPOTS

from the Touring, to the Grand and Compact ranges. It is not, however, compatible with the Ultra Compact Range (Roxie, Cricket and Buxie).

Amongst SpotMe’s many features is the novel skill of being able to ‘blind’ follow an artist on stage, not with front light, but with back light and side light, overheads, foot lights, ground rows and cyclorama lighting. This is a bemusing but enjoyable new skill for an operator to play with and brings unique possibilities to a lighting designer’s palette. For instance, a performer can light up ground rows or footlights simply by walking or dancing next to these lighting units.

It‘s also possible to synchronise movement, irising, video sequences, colour change, offset and masking in a very efficient and effortless way.

The operator’s skill is not replaced with remote technology. Contrary to automated systems which just follow performers, SpotMe allows human control over the followspot, which means the operator is able to anticipate the performer movements, erratic or unforeseen happenings. This makes reaction time much quicker and more organic. Also the operator will be familiar with the sequences in a show and knows the artists and their potential reactions, all of which add up to smoother, more aesthetically pleasing and professional results.

With the SpotMe system, Robert Juliat upgrades traditional followspot usage to fit the modern age. It’s a valuable companion in the followspot operator’s and lighting designer’s toolbox, and this aesthetic approach drives people’s interest in SpotMe. The system was recently used during the opening ceremony of the FINA World Aquatic Championships, at the request of LD Frédéric ‘Aldo’ Fayard.

“The FINA Opening Ceremony was a good test for SpotMe, both as a trial under live conditions, and to ensure it meets the true requirements of lighting designers in all aspects prior to releasing it to market,” said Robert Juliat MD, François Juliat. “Live testing gives us the opportunity to fine tune the details and make sure it is a viable - and valuable - product in real conditions.”

Photo: Julien Panieá www.robertjuliat.com

ROBERT JULIAT SPOTME The Robert Juliat SpotMe system is an innovative device that gives the positions of the performer on stage to the lighting console, without the need of emitters or cameras. With an easy and fast setup, the SpotMe system consists of sensors installed on the followspot and a server that communicates the XYZ positions and the beam size parameters to the console by Posi Stage Net (PSN) protocol. All parameters are used by the console to control any automated or static lights, then coordinating stage lighting to follow performers.

SpotMe is the only performer tracking system to be driven via a real followspot and its operators and can coordinate an endless amount of different stage lighting fixtures to follow performers on stage without the need for on-stage / performer sensors or cameras.

This system uses advanced algorithms and calibration to interpret information sent from its onboard sensors to communicate with any PSN console, and then coordinates the identical movements of other fixtures in the rig, even conventional fixtures with no feed back capability. SpotMe can also be used to define a stage area to avoid light spill into scenic or public areas, while iris movements can be converted into any other function, such as automatic zoom.

The SpotMe system features a server, a specific stand integrating a sensor module that collects the information related to the pan motion, and a bespoke yoke equipped with another sensor module dealing with the tilt motion data.

Quick and simple to assemble and set up, the system is calibrated with 4 stage markers that are positioned on stage to delimit a rectangular shape.

The SpotMe system is compatible with all Robert Juliat followspots 114

2018

HOG FACTOR 7 November – Production Park, Wakefield

Register your team now at highend.com/hogfactor/hog-factor-UK

etcconnect.com

|

highend.com

HOG FACTOR 2018 With the exciting news that the UK round of the Hog Factor will be hosted at this year’s Production Futures, TPi speaks to High End Systems’ Regional Sales Manager for Central USA and Canada, Paul Hancock, about the history of the event.

Officially launching in 2015, the Hog Factor has become an internationally renowned competition being held in conjunction with major trade shows across the globe. The goal; to bring a selection of promising lighting students to showcase their talents, competing against one another to program a lighting show that demonstrates mastery of show design under pressure. Since its creation, the Hog Factor has gone from strength to strength. With the UK iteration of the competition being held at a selection of tradeshow over the years, 2018 marks the event making a new home at TPi’s own Production Futures.

“The objective of the Hog Factor is simple and has remained the same over the last 3 years,” stated Paul Hancock, High End System’s Regional Sales Manager for Central USA and Canada. “To cultivate the next generation of Hog users.” Having been involved since the beginning of the event, the idea to make the Hog Factor a global event came from the UK. “The first competition was run at trade show in 2014 and the reaction was overwhelming,” stated Hancock. “It sparked several discussions for us to adapt the competition for the US and LDI 2015.”

For the uninitiated, the competition has 2 phases. The first is open to all university students who can register a team for up to 3 people along with a sponsoring professor. “Each team is then provided with a special demo of Light Converse with a pre-designed lighting rig in the visualiser,” explained Hancock. “The teams pick from 1 of 3 pieces of pre-selected music, for which they will collectively choreograph and program the lights.” From there, the teams submit their work for the internal judges at High End Systems and ETC to pick the top 3 submissions, who are then brought along to one of the regional competitions. For Americans it’s LDI and this year for UK participants the competition ground will be Production Futures. “The UK leg joining forces with Production Futures means ETC/ HES are successfully growing the competition,” explained Hancock. “More importantly, it is giving more students the opportunity to learn an industry-leading lighting console in a fun and unique way.”

He went on to explain during the first year of running the Hog Factor Competition at LDI, all students reported it was their first experience using Hog 4 Software - and they all taught themselves with the Hog 4PC version of the console. “This speaks volumes on how easy it is to learn and run a Hog 4,” enthused Hancock. “It also means that the students’ work will get more recognition - by getting in front of the face of the industry. We’ve already seen how the contest has helped launch some careers!”

Along with the title, each winning team member of the UK round of the Hog Factor will receive a High End Systems Hoglet 4 - the compact wing, designed for tight spaces and small productions such as clubs, churches and small concert venues.

“At the end of the day, this competition is about giving students the opportunity to learn a lighting console they may not have been exposed to,” concluded Hancock. “I would like to see the incentive expand in a way that put more Hogs in the hands of students and their institutions. Personally, I would be thrilled to see the competition grow into a World Hog Factor Finals, but I think we still have a way to go before that point!”

There is still time for those keen to enter the 2018 event. You must be a student enrolled at a college of university level institution and can be applied via www.highend.com/hogfactor.

TPi www.productionfutures.co.uk

116

We take a look back at some of the previous UK winners.

2015 – UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH WALES USW DRAGONS Team Members: David Howard and Sam Clay This was the second time the University had entered a team to the Hog Factor. For 2015 the USW Dragons consisted of David Howard and Sam Clay. “Both Sam and I thought the Hog Factor was a great opportunity and a great way to learn a new lighting control package while being in with a shot of winning a desk!” stated Howard. He continued: “Looking back now 3 years on, I’d say the Hog Factor was the main thing that pushed me to learn how to program properly. Before, I used to design on manual desks, which was fine for the work I was doing at the time, but the training that came with Hog Factor from Colin Wood was one of the main factors that helped me learn how to program and program well.”

Having both graduated now, Howard has gone on to become a main stage lighting designer for 2 major UK festivals. Meanwhile, Clay has moved into the world of high end lighting integration working with London-based Ideaworks.

2016 – ROYAL CENTRAL SCHOOL OF

SPEECH AND DRAMA THE CENTRALS Team Members: Zoe Burnham and Kostis Mousikos Following some encouragement from their course leader, Nick Moran, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s students Zoe Burnham and Kostis Mousikos joined forces for the 2016 iteration of the Hog Factor. Designing looks for Royal Blood’s Figure and Ingrid Michaelson’s Warpath, the duo found themselves in the UK final and left victorious. “We spent 2 days programming in a bedroom,” reminisced Burnham. “We listened to the songs so many times during that time. Personally I learnt a lot about lighting for music and how, when there are no humans to light, you have to rely on movement in the fixtures.”

Since graduating, Mousikos went on to produce lighting for theatre in Killing Time at Park Theatre in the UK and in Dominion at Theatro 104 in Greece. Burnham has also pursued a life in theatre lighting having worked on a variety of West End shows and is currently in-house at the Young Vic.

2017 – LIPA RAINBOW CHASERS Team Members: Will Peters and Alex Gardner After hearing about the competition from their Lecturer, Sofia Alexiadoux, roommates Will Peters and Alex Gardner put themselves forward for the 2017 event. “We had worked on many shows together prior to the Hog Factor with Alex programming and myself designing,” stated Peters.

“I remember standing at the desk being so nervous,” admitted Gardner. “I’m used to being behind the scenes and it was quite scary when you are busking live in front of a substantial audience.”

Despite the challenge Gardner stated how the Hog Factor gave him a chance to really get a feel for the Hog 4. “So much so I recently used it on once of my end of year assessments,” he commented.

Following the UK round, the Rainbow Chasers went on to claim second place at the European final.

Having graduated, both Peters and Gardner have already gone on to make strong moves in their careers. With the success of England in the FIFA World Cup, Peters had his hands full tour managing The Lightning Seeds. “I’ve also been working on several other projects for Seven and Footasylum for the Nike Air Max Day,” stated Peters.

“This was the first time outside of LIPA I got to use our HedgeHog we won during the contest!”

Since graduating Peters has also been taken on full time by Hawthorn as a Video Technician.

Meanwhile Gardner has been working on numerous productions, most recently being employed for the Royal Court Liverpool’s Summer Season as Lead Programmer.

117

GEAR HEADS

PIONEER PRO AUDIO’S XY SERIES

Late last year, Pioneer Pro Audio unveiled the newest addition to the XY Series - the XY-3B and XY-2.

Both speakers have been designed to support both fixed installations and full touring solutions for rental and festivals. TPi checked in with Alex Barrand, Technical Manager Pioneer Professional Audio, to discuss the development of the products and the market reception to the speakers…

The XY Series has become renowned for providing excellent reliability and outstanding sound quality to nightclubs and music venues around the world. With the introduction of the XY-3B and XY-2, which offers the highest output in the Series, even more venues and live events can benefit from an XY Series sound system tailored to their specific needs.

“When we decided to enter into the professional audio market, it was clear we didn’t have to re-invent the wheel for our first product line,” commented Pioneer Pro Audio’s Technical Manager Alex Barrand, as he outlined the lasts addition to the XY Series. “Instead, we took a look at the market and set out to improve upon existing products,” he continued.

For Barrand and his team there several area in which they wished to improve. Specifically - performance, build-quality and design. “From the

first design concept for the XY Series range I feel we have ended up with a solid-performing product line-up,” enthused Barrand.

The XY-3B was developed over the course of 3 years, with 3D printers used to help realise the concept of creating natural sound with high output.

It’s been tested at numerous international festivals and outdoor events such as Xtrema Outdoor, Lovebox, and Tomorrowland. In the XY-3B, an 8-inch cone driver delivers clean and precise mid-range frequencies using Pioneer Pro Audio’s X-Phase system. The XY-2 speaker on the other hand is the mid-high section of the XY-3B. Designed specifically for large-scale venues and stadia, the XY-2 can be used for PA applications, as a DJ booth monitor or as a down fill in an XY-3B cluster setting.

“The key features of the XY-3B, make this enclosure suitable for a wide 118

PIONEER PRO AUDIO XY SERIES

range of applications,” explained Barrand. First of all is the LF section Throughout the R&D process, Pioneer Pro Audio kept up a dialogue with capabilities of the speaker. Loaded with 2 x 12inch system engineers and end users. “This is the most custom B&C drivers allows the XY-3B LF section to important thing to include when developing new produce a tight and clean response. The custom products and is always a key part of Pioneer Pro drivers also feature a waterproof resin applied to Audio’s R&D process,” explained Barrand. Coming both sides of the cone. This stiffens up the cone, so from a system engineer background, it’s important it can produce its tight response, maintaining the to me that manufacturers listen to the people in “When we decided to enter natural sound of a paper cone compared to other the real world who use these products every day. materials.

For the XY-3B system we were able to implement a into the professional audio Meanwhile, for MHF section, the speakers are great many features based on this feedback.” market, it was clear we didn’t loaded with 1 x 8inch B&C driver and 1 x 1inch B&C To close Barrand spoke of the market reception compression driver, ensuring a smooth blend for have to re-invent the wheel for the latest addition of XY Series had received from the MHF section. The wave guide offers a 45 x 50 the wider entertainment market. “Most of the our first product line. Instead, coverage pattern. rental and install partners who have purchased “Key to the MHF section is our custom X-Phase the XY-3B system tend to use it for dance music, we took a look at the market Baffle,” explained Barrand. “Its convex shape however there have been many instances where and set out to improve upon sits over the mouth of the 8inch driver and has the system has been used for live bands. The multiple curve section openings, allowing the comments we have received from some wellexisting products.” sound waves from the driver to pass smoothly. known FOH Engineers have been very positive.”

Alex Barrand, Technical Manager This allows for perfect alignment and increased TPi Pioneer Professional Audio projection coverage.” www.pioneerproaudio.com 119

PSA: THE BIGGER PICTURE

SAVE STAGE LIGHTING – AN UPDATE This month, we’re handing over the reins to Rob Halliday, whose unfortunately acquired knowledge of EU Ecodesign law is exceeded only by his immense knowledge of all things stage lighting. Both Halliday and the ALD have kindly let us have an adapted version of his Focus magazine update on the ongoing talks between the European stage lighting industry and those charged with updating the Ecodesign rules.

If it felt like the months from January to May were full of noise discovering the devastating effect the EU’s proposed new lighting regulations would have on entertainment lighting, raising awareness of it amongst lighting practitioners across Europe, lighting manufacturers, the general public including 82000+ signatories of an on-line petition, MEPs, MPs (including the Prime Minister), show producers, venue owners and the worlds of film and tv lighting, all ultimately leading to a meeting with the EU’s DG Energy, then June felt like a month of silence.

At the meeting with the EU on 17th May, representatives from the entertainment lighting industry (the team who went to Brussels that day included representatives from the ALD, PLASA, VLPT in Germany, OETHG in Austria, the Swedish Association of Lighting Designers, the IALD, the Society of London Theatre, plus PEARLE, the pan-European theatre producers league) were asked to submit proposals for a suitable exemption for entertainment lighting. This we did.

The proposal submitted included a reference to the existing European safety standard for stage and studio luminaires (EN60598-2-17), plus a list of lamp bases used in entertainment lighting fixtures. We felt both were required since the standard would define fixtures with built-in light sources (ie. LED fixtures) but not those using separate light sources (eg. tungsten or arc lamps), while the list of lamp bases would define those light sources, tungsten and arc, we felt were important for our work; limiting the exemption to their use in already-defined stage and studio luminaires would, it seemed to us, reduce or remove the potential for an exemption for these bulbs to be abused by people outside entertainment lighting - something DG Energy have repeatedly suggested happened with the previous entertainment lighting exemption, without ever really explaining that abuse.

That proposal was submitted through PEARLE, which has become our ‘channel’ into Brussels... and then the silence began. Silence on our side 120

PSA: THE BIGGER PICTURE

because we’d all been asked to be quiet and let the EU do its work. Silence on their side, because it was doing its work. We were told that a next draft would appear in the first week of July; we waited...

Finally, on 16th July new drafts for both the Ecodesign and EcoLabelling regulations and their corresponding Annex documents (dated 3rd/4th July) appeared. Silence over, time for some new reading to begin!

What the reading reveals is that we have made DG Energy understand that entertainment lighting is something of a special case, that there is now language in the text very specifically about entertainment lighting - but that more discussions are required just to be clear that the exemption gives us all we need.

The key change, for us, is in 2 points of Annex III (Exemptions) of the Ecodesign Annex document. Point 3m details, “halogen light sources with cap-type G9.5, GX9.5, GY9.5, GZ9.5, GP9.5HPM, G16d, GX16, GX16d, GY16, G22, G38, GX38, GX38Q, P28s, P40s, PGJX50, QXL, designed and marketed specifically for scene-lighting use in film-studios, TVstudios, and photographic-studios, or for stage-lighting use in theatres, discos, during concerts or other entertainment events.” That covers many lamps we use and love, including the Source Four’s HPL, the Revolution’s QXL, 1k and 2k Fresnel lamps, lamps for fixtures like the Brio, SL and CCT Freedom, lamps for older fixtures such as the Minuette/Prelude ranges, Par64 lamps and more. It also exempts some larger tungsten lamps, though some were already outside of the scope of the regulations because they exceeded the 82,000 lumen upper limit for sources covered by the rules.

Point 3n details, “colour-tuneable light sources” that can be set to at least the colours defined as “white light” by the EU - in effect, multi-coloured additive colour mixing LED sources.

While the EU seems to have decided not to make any reference to the EN standard we proposed, they have clarified many other points. Key is that the measurement is of the light source, outside of the optical system and excluding any other functionality; if the light source is built in to a fixture it has to be removed for testing. That should make it easier to hit both the efficiency and standby power requirements, since there are no losses through the optical train to worry about and you can remove non-lighting power consumption (displays, fans, motors).

Alongside that, it has been clarified that while a simple lumen per watt calculation is used for the new A-G EcoLabelling scheme (with ‘G’ anything 85lm/W or below), a different, more complex calculation, including corrections for different source types and colour qualities, is the one used to determine whether a product is allowed or not. Most of the common arc sources we use seem to pass this test, as do many low-powered white LED sources, though achieving the targets for high power white LED sources will be harder due to the increasing inefficiencies from etendue as light sources grow larger. However, manufacturers do have an extra year to try to achieve this: another key change is that the

proposed start date is a year later than before, September 2021. Curiously, even products that are exempt from the Ecodesign regs will have to follow the EcoLabelling regs; that probably means no-one will sell a tungsten or arc fixture with a bulb included, since without a light source the fixture itself is not subject to either regulation.

So, problem solved?

Nearly, but as ever, the devil is in the details. One particular issue is that just 17 lamp bases are included in the exemption, considerably less than the 49 we submitted.

Truth be told, we never expected some of these to get through - the M16 lamp is too widely used in domestic/office lighting and is clearly a target for the EU. Some are safe because they sit above the 82000 lumen upper limit, particularly since that measurement is now outside a fixture. Some - beamlight, Svoboda and ACL lamps - are potentially safe because they originally come from the marine or aero fields which have their own exemptions, though it’d be nice to be sure. The R7 linear lamp used for cyc lighting and much else is still unclear because we think there’s a typo in the current draft; we’ve asked for clarification. The rest? At the time of writing, we’re still checking. Please do look at the list, compare it to the fixtures you have or love to use, and shout if anything’s missing.

For LED colour-mixing sources, there is a little concern about the way such a fixture is defined by having at least red, green and blue emitters of quite tightly defined colour ranges and purity; the spec for the green emitter feels too tight and not quite right, and it also seems to inhibit the ability for someone to innovate with different colour combinations, if that turned out to be possible or desirable.

These are all issues that require clarity and a bit more discussion. The same team of people who presented to the EU in May and then submitted the exemption proposal have already started informal discussions through PEARLE while continuing to analyse the documents. Within the EU, the documents now move in to ‘interservice consultation’, which is when the other EU departments (culture, environment, employment) get to comment on the new draft. After that, the expert groups for the Member States get to work on the draft. The entertainment industry will be continuing, through PEARLE, to talk to DG Energy through this process to achieve the clarifications and, if necessary, changes that are required.

So, we are making progress. Things are looking much better than they did a few months ago. But having got this far, we just need to make sure we keep paying attention and working the details to really make sure that we can continue to get the tools we love (or, in the case of tungsten, can continue for as long as the manufacturers keep making it, which is a whole other topic of conversation!)

For the latest updates, please do check in regularly to the ALD’s Save Stage Lighting page: www.ald.org.uk/resources/savestagelighting TPi www.psa.org.uk 121

Fog is our passion!

Battery-operated fog generators to be built into costumes and props, powerful Haze- and Fog generators from 650 W to 3 kW, a 9 kW machine to fill big halls and stadiums, a powerful low fog machine as a low power or high power version and an attachment to produce low fog: We have the right machine for any effect.

Cobra 3.1 Fog generator, 3100W, extremely silent nozzle, Ethernet, Touchscreen available in Summer 2018 Tiny S, Tiny FX, Tiny CX, Power-Tiny Battery-operated fog generators, 30 W/70 W/400 W Unique 2.1 Haze generator DMX, 1500 W Viper S, Viper nt, Viper 2.6 & Orka Fog generator DMX, 650 W, 1300 W, 2600 W, 3000 W & 9000 W Cryo-Fog Low fog generator 2300 W, low pressure or high pressure version Cryo-Gate Attachment for low fog, to be connected to any normal fog generator Look-Fan DMX Fan 850 W, DMX controllable

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INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS

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INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS

Above: Andy Ostler, Channel Manager for UC products at POLAR; Adam Hall’s Gabriel Medrano, Markus Jahnel, Marcel Mieger.

Adam Hall Group has expanded its sales team. Markus Jahnel, COO and Managing Director, will assume responsibility for the Adam Hall’s global business development with immediate effect. “The long-term development of new business areas and partnerships and the development and personal maintenance of our global networks are important priorities for the immediate future. I am looking forward to being even closer to our marketplace expansion,” said Jahnel With the handover of this strategic area to Jahnel by the end of September, the Adam Hall Group also bids a warm farewell to the retiring Bodo Falkenried. Meanwhile, Marcel Mieger takes on the role of Sales Director Europe at the beginning of September. He will look after the everexpanding European sales network of the innovative event technology solutions provider. Gabriel Medrano takes over as COO of the newly formed, New Jersey based Adam Hall North America.

POLAR, has announced the appointment of Andy Ostler as its new Channel Manager for UC products.

Stuart Leader, Director at POLAR Integrated Solutions commented: “This is a fantastic appointment for us. Andy is an operator of the highest calibre who’s work in UC and video-conferencing at companies such as Brother UK, Vidyo and Emblaze-VCON, has seen him develop a formidable skill-set. He is a very personable character who combines a customer-first approach with a clear enthusiasm for delivering solutions. There is no doubt whatsoever that with Andy at the helm of what is for us a fast-growing and very important channel, POLAR’s interests are in excellent hands.”

Rich Rowley has joined Adlib as General Manager of lighting and video.

Rowley has enjoyed a long relationship with the Liverpool based full production and rental specialist over the years, and he brings more than a decade of his own senior management experience.

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INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS

Below: Adlib’s General Manager of Lighting and Video, Rich Rolwey; Marketing Manager of Chauvet Europe, Alain Minet; Jan Cernota has been appointed as LITEC’s Export Sales Manager.

“I am delighted to welcome Rich into the Adlib family,” stated Adlib owner and founder Andy Dockerty, “I believe it is testament to the growth of Adlib and the development of our lighting and video departments that we have secured the services of a character of Rich’s unquestionable status. His wealth of knowledge will enhance a tremendously focused and talented team.”

Chauvet has named Alain Minet Marketing Manager of Chauvet Europe.

Minet, who comes to Chauvet after successful tenures as a marketing executive at Serge Ferrari and Philips, will work out of the company’s recently opened Paris office.

“Our entire marketing team is excited about Alain joining Chauvet,” said John Castelino, Global Vice President of Marketing at Chauvet. “As an organisation, we thrive on innovation. Our growth has been built on new ideas, and I am confident that Alain’s contributions will only make us stronger.”

LITEC welcomed its new Export Sales Manager, Jan Cernota to its growing international sales team.

Cernota brings a wealth of sales experience with him, having served as international Sales Director for many well-known brands across the world within the audio professional market segment, as well as working for ten years in a film studio. Cernota also comes from a musical background, where he was a professional violinist, as well as a sound technician and sound designer in recording studios.

GLP has appointed Mods Art Srl as its new Italian distributor. The move was confirmed by GLP Sales Executive, Sven Heindl and the Italian company’s chairman, Dr. Giacomo Larìa.

Larìa commented on representing GLP: “This is because our philosophy is really concentrated on technology and research. This we have found in GLP and we are proud to represent this brand in the Italian market. We are impressed not only by the technological innovation but also the reliability of the products — and the GLP team itself, which is both professional and positive.”

PRG announced today that VER has merged into Production Resource Group in Europe and the Middle East. The companies will be commonly controlled by The Jordan Company, GSO Capital Partners and PRG Management. Jere Harris will serve as Chairman and CEO of PRG and VER, and Stephan Paridaen will be President and COO. “For more than 20 years PRG has been diligent in offering its clients the best production service and equipment in the entertainment industry. Growth across disciplines, markets and geographies has always been a key part of our strategy,” said Jere Harris, PRG’s Chairman and CEO. “Now, our ability to support all types of entertainment productions globally will take on new meaning, raising an already high bar to an unprecedented level.”

DAS Audio of America is pleased to announce the appointment of Edwin Guerra to the position of US Marketing Manager. Jaime Villegas, General Manager of DAS Audio of America said: “Finding an individual who, in addition to possessing the technical background necessary for a position of this nature, also possesses the skills and vision to help formulate the company’s marketing message is no small undertaking. Edwin demonstrates both the technical understanding and the artistic vision of what it takes to convey the company’s products in the best possible light. I am confident he will do well here at DAS Audio. All of us welcome him onto

our team.”

Adamson Systems Engineering welcomed Livella Brand Group as the latest US addition to its Adamson Network. Headquartered in Lenexa, KS, Livella is now Adamson’s manufacturer’s representative covering Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Southern Illinois.

“Adamson is committed to continuing our strong year-over-year growth in the Americas, and by welcoming Livella Brand Group to the Adamson Network, we’ve further strengthened our U.S. sales force with an elite partner,” said Marc Bertrand, Managing Director, Americas for Adamson Systems Engineering.

UK spatial audio company, Out Board, has announced tm stagetec

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www.interfacio.com • +44 208 986 5002

INDUSTRY APPOINTMENTS

Pro Audio’s Joss Pack and David Myers; GDS’s Katie Dyer and Charlotte Fenwick.

systems as exclusive Australian Distributor and support specialist for its leading-edge spatial audio and showcontrol products TiMax SoundHub and TiMax Tracker. Mark Lownds, General Manager at tm stagetec systems said: ‘We are thrilled to welcome TiMax into the tm stagetec systems’ suite of brands. The fit between our technology-driven ethos and the leading edge, high-quality technology offered by TiMax products is a perfect match. To say that we are excited to work further with this brand and offer our clients in the Australian market this reliable, high-quality product for outstanding audio in the live performance, event and experiential arenas is an understatement.

Audio-Technica has announced the appointment of a new distributor for both its consumer and professional audio products in South Africa. With effect from 1 September 2018, Pro Audio, located near Johannesburg, will join Audio-Technica’s network of distribution partners across EMEA. Audio-Technica’s Export Sales Manager Dre Klaassen said of the new agreement: “We’re delighted to welcome Pro Audio to the Audio-Technica family. We are very confident that it is the right company to build AudioTechnica’s profile in both the pro and consumer markets in South Africa.

The company’s wide experience and drive in distribution is unique in the territory and I very much look forward to working with them in the future.”

Pro Audio’s Managing Director, David Myers said: “I am extremely excited and proud of Pro Audio’s appointment as distributor for Audio-Technica. As a truly world-renowned brand, it will be a great complement to the current portfolio of brands we provide to the pro and consumer markets. With the addition of Audio-Technica, we can now offer a complete pro solution for installation, touring, retail, MI stores, studio, delegate and solution-based corporate installs. This brand really pushes our company to the next level and will ensure our continued growth and success in all the markets we represent.”

Renkus-Heinz, has announced the appointment of SONING Praha as the company’s distributor in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1990 as an acoustics consulting firm, SONING has become one of the country’s largest professional AV design authorities, with clients including Czech Television, Czech Radio, atelier AI Design. A leading architectural partner, SONING provides acoustics and design services and custom sound absorption materials, as well as complete AV systems consulting and design.

As the Renkus-Heinz distributor, SONING will provide sales, as well as after-sales support, and technical training opportunities to customers in the Czech Republic. “Renkus-Heinz is a legendary brand and a part of professional audio history,” remarked SONING’s Jiri Gubik. “Their innovative approach to loudspeaker design and steerable arrays is a perfect fit with SONING’s architectural acoustics approach to systems design, and their products are ideally suited for addressing our customers’ needs.”

“We are thrilled to welcome SONING to the Renkus-Heinz family,” added

Karl Brunvoll, Renkus-Heinz VP of International Sales. “Their project portfolio is unparalleled and diverse, and their reputation is second to none. They are an ideal partner for providing the highest level of support to our customers, and we are looking forward to a long and successful relationship.”

Following its acquisition of Blinding Light, TSL Lighting have invested in a large number of Chroma-Q LED fixtures and Luminex DMX hubs, all of which have been supplied by the brand’s UK & Eire dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET). A large quantity of Chroma-Q Color Force II 72 and Chroma-Q Space Force LED fixtures have been added to TSL’s extensive rental inventory. AC-ET also supplied TSL with 50 Luminex LumiSplit 2.10 DMX hubs.

Sam Tamplin, Managing Director of TSL Lighting commented: “With the recent acquisition of Blinding Light, we needed to make sure we had the right inventory to meet the needs of our customers.” He concluded: “The addition of these industry leading fixtures and infrastructure options, will ensure we continue to provide our clients with what we consider to be the best quality equipment available.”

11th Hour recently added 3 new members of staff to its ranks. Matthew Morgan and Rhys Thomas join 11th Hour as warehouse assistants and Debbie Alexander takes the role of in-house bookkeeper. 11th Hour Director John Davies welcomes the new recruits: “Demand for our services continues to grow and it is now common to find ourselves working simultaneously on multiple large scale projects. Out staff are 11 Hour’s greatest resource to maintain the very high standards of efficiency clients are accustomed to.”

Specialist Bristol-based LED lighting manufacturer, GDS, is pleased to announce the recruitment of 2 new members of staff - Charlotte Fenwick to the position of Marketing Manager and Katie Dyer to the role of Business Development Executive. Fenwick brings wide experience of growthmarketing from the property development and engineering sector, whilst Dyer has a strong sales background, developed across the IT industry.

Managing Director Richard Cuthbert is looking forward to working with the new recruits: “These are very exciting times at GDS. We’re moving forward on a number of new fronts, so it’s essential that we keep pace with progress as we continue to expand the business. Charlotte’s appreciation of engineering and technology and her previous work in taking forward projects in the architectural field, makes her a great fit for our principal marketing role. Katie’s proven sales skills will support our recently created on-site service operation, as well as reinforcing the wider GDS team as we open up new channels. Both are very capable, committed and energetic individuals, who will be instrumental in helping to shape our future.”

TPi www.tpimagazine.com/category/industry-jobs/ 124

Technical Events Manager Vacancy Location: Edinburgh

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (REMT) seeks a full time Technical Events Manager, 37.5 hours a week, competitively remunerated.

Responsible for the planning and event management of events focusing on technical event and production activity, notably the annual Edinburgh Tattoo and overseas tattoos.

The applicant must have experience of: • • • •

Technical Live Events with understanding of lighting, audio, projection and delivery of special effects.

Working with temporary live events structures and associated professional competencies CAD drawing, time and crew planning & technical timecode programming Relevant professional qualification, planning and project management

Applications by 30 Sep 18 with CV and covering letter.

For further information see: www.tpimagazine.com/jobs or contact: Doug Cook, Head of Operations, The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo | DougC@edintattoo.co.uk | 0131 2254783

To join our team in Amsterdam we are currently seeking a technically skilled and highly creative Experienced 3D Artist designing sculptures for the world’s top music acts, theatrical and sporting events.

Key responsibilities • The creation of hi-res 3d meshes and complex textures.

• The creation of 3d meshes for fabric patterning according to specific guidelines.

Required skills and experience • Advanced working and technical knowledge of cinema4d.

• High level of proficiency in texture creation and photographic manipulation.

• Draughtsmanship, artistic ability, and thorough understanding of painterly illusions.

• Ability to work accurately from reference materials.

• A good communicator, able to work within a multi-disciplined team on tight deadlines.

• Methodical and precise.

We offer • A job for 40 hours a week in a creative and quality driven environment with enthusiastic colleagues.

• Working for a company that takes its products from concept to finished artworks to the biggest stages and live events around the world.

• A unique opportunity to break into a new, exciting and groundbreaking industry.

• A studio location within cycling distance from the heart of Amsterdam About Airworks Inflatables Airworks Inflatables creates air sculptures for international touring artists, theatrical spectaculars, and large scale events. Clients include: The Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, ACDC, Katy Perry, Iron Maiden, opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games and the world’s leading large scale international dance events. With our artistic integrity, attention to detail and groundbreaking techniques we are the world leaders in the design and production of inflatable sculpture. Airworks is looking for the best creative talent to keep pushing the boundaries of inflatable art. Come join our multi-disciplined international team in an expanding studio as we break into new markets across the globe. For more information see: www.airworks.nl.

Please send your resume, a short motivation and your portfolio to info@airworks.nl.

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To advertise here enquiries should be made to Lauren Dyson & Lyndsey Hopwood Lauren Dyson - Tel: +44 (0) 161 476 9119 Email: l.dyson@mondiale.co.uk Lyndsey Hopwood - Tel: +44 (0)161 476 8360 Email: l.hopwood@mondiale.co.uk SEPTEMBER 2018 ADVERTISERS 10k Used Gear 68 AC Entertainment Technologies 23 Adam Hall 27 Adamson 59 ADJ 35 AirX 78 Airworks Inflatables 125 Audio-Technica 71 Bates Box 21 Beat The Street 44,45, 65 6 Blackmagic Design Bose 29 BPM SFX 75 Brompton Technology 50 Capital Sound 15 ChainMaster 5 Chauvet Professional 31

Clair Global 39 Claypaky 19 CLF Lighting 73 CODA Audio 83 13 d&b audiotechnik Diablo Digital 79 DiGiCo 49 Digital Projection 109 disguise 89 Duratruss 61 Elation Professional 7 GIS 113 GLP 74 GLS Lighting 67 Green Hippo 17 Hog Factor/ High End Systems 115 infiLED 41 Interfacio 123 John Henry’s 122 Litec 101 Le Maitre 15

Leisuretec 4 Look Solutions 121 Lucky Frog 52 Madrix 61 Martin Audio IFC Martin By Harman IBC Millennium Studios 111 MOVECAT 113 MTFX 9 NEKO Trust 99 Neumann 33 NEXO 25 OutBoard TiMax 91 Philips Vari-Lite BC Pioneer Pro Audio 93 Polecam 55 Powersoft 85 Premier Aviation 55 Pro Tapes and Specialities 91 Prolyte Group 69 Protec 3

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Renkus Heinz 46 Robe 107 Robert Juliat 105 ROE Visual 111 81 Serious Stages SES 12 SLS Production 125 SSE Audio Group 97 Strictly FX 57 The Appointment Group 56 The NAMM Show 103 The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 125 The Showman’s Show 111 TW AUDiO 87 Universal Pixels 43 VYV 47 Video Dust 58 Wonder Works 51

BACK CHAT

JODY DIAZ FRANCIS Automation Engineer for Queen + Adam Lambert

How did you decide to specialise?

Originally, I started in sound, and did that until 2008. I had been doing a lot of corporate work in my native Spain, and decided I didn’t like my job anymore. I remembered that in my early touring years, I used to enjoy helping the carpenters with the set when I didn’t have anything to do.

So, I again got hold of Jake and offered my services as a set carpenter. After 3 years as a carpenter for Walking With Dinosaurs, I managed to get into the automation department, and have been happily operating ever since.

What are you working on at present?

I’m currently the Head of Automation for the Queen + Adam Lambert. As I type, we’re doing a residency in Las Vegas. I have also been running automation for Dynamo’s tour this year.

What gear do you work with daily?

I use different systems depending on what gigs I’m on. On Queen + Adam Lambert, we’re using a range of different pieces: hydraulic scissor lifts, variable speed chain hoists, and some self-climbing prop lifts. We run it all on TAIT’s control system, Navigator. Whereas on Dynamo, I used a few variable speed chain hoists, and a few winches for moving curtains running off a Kinesys system.

You’ve been touring internationally for some years now - what are the best / worst aspects for you?

The worst aspect is the obvious answer; missing home, family, friends and partners. I also miss cooking for myself!

As nice as it is being catered for on a daily basis, I really enjoy getting in the kitchen and cooking. I also miss being able to have a dog.

The best, apart from travelling the world, (which I still enjoy), is working with good people. I have made some great friends on the road in the past 16 years. Most of the friends I’ve made are the kind of personalitites you wouldn’t find in a ‘normal’ work environment.

How did you initially get into touring production?

When I was 20-years-old. I had just come out of Manchester City College having completed my National Diploma in music technology. A friend of the family told me to send my CV to Jake Berry [Production Manager]. I sent him my info, convinced that nothing would come out of it, as he looked after The Rolling Stones and U2. But to my surprise, he replied saying he would keep me in mind for future jobs.

But things were quiet as 9/11 had just happened and a lot of tours had been cancelled. Just a couple months later I received an email from Clair Global offering me a job as a Sound Technician for the Bob The Builder Live. It was an arena world tour & lasted 2 years.

When you’re not on the road, what would we find you doing?

I spend as much time with my friends as I can, and try and keep busy by surfing, snowboarding and swimming.

Plus... I’m not going to lie; I do a fair bit of hanging out at the local pubs in my little Spanish town!

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