Bad Uncles reunite at Hockenheimring- Oct '14

TOTAL PRODUCTION INTERNATIONAL

www.tpiawards.com

TOTAL PRODUCTION INTERNATIONAL

WWW.TPiMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2014

ISSUE 182

LIVE EVENT DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY • OCTOBER 2014 • ISSUE 182

HYPNOTIC EYE, TRANSFIXING SOUND TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS REVEAL A NEW LIVE SOUNDSCAPE

THE WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART....

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: K-ARRAY KH8 • BAD UNCLES • EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL • CREAMFIELDS LEROY BENNETT • V FESTIVAL • ROCK EN SEINE • ROBE TURNS 20 • RIGGING AND TRUSSING MARKET FOCUS

EVENT FOCUS: Bad Uncles

BAD UNCLES REUNITE AT HOCKENHEIMRING FOR ONE OF THE LARGEST LIVE CONCERTS IN THE WORLD GRITTY, NOSTALGIC AND EVOCATIVE ARE JUST SOME OF THE WORDS USED TO DESCRIBE ONE OF THE LARGEST LIVE CONCERTS STAGED THIS CENTURY, TPi CHECKED OUT WHAT MADE THE BAD UNCLES ROCK IN THEIR HOME COUNTRY OF GERMANY. This summer saw one of the world’s most prestigious Formula One racing courses, the Hockenheimring, play host to an event unlike any other it had seen before. Spanning two nights, 200,000 fans gathered to witness German rock group Böhse Onkelz (or Bad Uncles) command the largest stage ever built in Europe for their first live set in nine years. Crowds were whipped into a frenzy by a colossal melting pot of lighting and video that included 1,500 lghting fixtures and hundreds of square metres of LED screens, making this one of the biggest reunions of recent years.

LIGHTING AND SET DESIGN At the helm, when it came to the show’s vast architectural lighting concept, was wellrespected German Show and Lighting Designer Jerry Appelt. “Nine years ago the Uncles performed two other huge sold out concerts at the Euro Speedway Lausitz, with a typical 28

open air set up,” Appelt explained. “For this new show they wanted a completely different look and feel and we gave it to them.”

That different look turned out to be Appelt’s dramatic vision of the Frankfurt city skyline replete with high rise towers. The set is sculpted from four vast towers positioned downstage, upstage and in the side wings.

Supplied and built by Stageco it is further embellished by a catwalk and B-stage, which acted as a jetty into the vast sea of fans.

“The sheer size of the venue made it important to bring the band closer to the audience. It also helped add to the 3D experience of the set. It was totally new for the band as they had never played on a B-stage before, but they used it to perform the acoustic portion of the show and it worked really well.”

Lighting and video equipment was supplied

by PRG. The floor package on the B-stage mainly comprised GLP Impression 90s, X4s

EVENT FOCUS: Bad Uncles

Opposite: 200,000 fans gathered to witness Bad Uncles’ first live set in nine years; An MA Lighting grandMA console was at FOH. Below: Lighting Designer, Jerry Appelt created the set featuring the Frankfurt city skyline replete with high rise towers; Lighting and video equipment was supplied by PRG.

and X4 XLs, which lit the edge of the catwalk alongside Clay Paky A.leda B-Eye K20 fixtures.

“The floor of the B-stage was covered by B-Eyes,” said Appelt. “It was my first time using them for an outdoor event and I was really impressed. I used some of the B-Eye effects as eye candy, but I’m also really impressed that, effects aside, it works so well as a basic lighting tool.”

More Clay Paky fixtures made up the floor package on the main stage, with Appelt

deploying the “really great output” of 80 Sharpys for set lighting, integrating them with the visual content.

Working in combination with these were PRG’s Best Boys, which were rigged on the front edge of the towers. Ninety-eight PRG Bad Boys, of which Appelt is a big fan, also featured: “PRG Bad Boys are great workhorses, they’re really powerful and I like their colour temperature because it’s not too cold. They’re great for outdoor events.”

As the show was such a momentous occasion in German music history, the entire three hour set was filmed for DVD and BluRay, directed by Michi Mayer. Appelt used 216 powerful Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash luminaires to illuminate the audience for the allimportant crowd reaction footage.

The show was programmed and run from a MA Lighting grandMA console. Appelt worked alongside Lighting Director and Programmer Marc Brunkhardt, Searchlight Operator

Visit us at stand M10 & M20 at

5-8 OCTOBER 2014 - ExCeL

Arcadia LSI Ad 136h x 190w.indd 1

11/09/2014 14:14

29

EVENT FOCUS: Bad Uncles

Below: 302sq metres of PRG 18mm Pixelpitch LED screens and 282sq metres of PRG 30mm Pixelpitch LED screens provided the visual backdrop; The concert’s production team; The gig took place at the prestigious Formula One racing course, the Hockenheimring.

Sebastian Huwig and Audience Light Operator Sascha Matthes: “The grandMA was my choice, but really it’s the unanimous choice of our team,” said Appelt. “We work exclusively on it, as it’s so important in terms of networking.”

During the eight-day pre-programming and rehearsal stages, Appelt was also able to use the grandMA desk, alongside the Avolites Media Ai S8 Media server, to give the band a very-real idea of what the impending show would look like: “We created a 3D set-up of the lighting fixtures on the grandMA and a 3D set up of the LED video screens on the Ai S8 media server, and combined both into a common picture so the band could see the full show, video and lighting, in a virtual environment. That was definitely a big advantage prior to the whole set up.”

VISUALS Working alongside Appelt was Roland Greil, of maverick design consultants Einstein and Sons and the show’s Ai media server supplier and operator. Alongside his colleague Thomas Döhring, Greil agrees that the pre-visualisation was a huge benefit in the process: “It was fantastic being able to have all the LED surfaces and screens in the right position in the virtual 30

world, so the band could see what it would look like in reality.”

For Appelt and Greil it was also important to create a cohesive look for each element of the show and so it was crucial to seeing the bigger picture. “This is the reason we controlled the Ai media servers with the grandMA console,” said Greil. “Video cues can be linked to the lighting cues and vice versa. Jerry also had a fader wing at his position so he could instantly have some influence on the feeds to the LED walls.”

When the day of the show came, three of Avolites Media’s S8 HD Media servers were ready for action. Arran Rothwell-Eyre from Avolites worked with Greil during the first week of pre-production and for six days on site for pre-show set up. Greil commented that everything went off without a hitch: “The Ai worked fluidly, it’s a fantastic tool.”

As the band swaggered on stage to the excited roar of the audience, the Ai media servers brought the LED video screens to life with content designed by Markus HollmanLoges from edgy German design studio Blitzen.

Since the early days, the Blitzen team have been designing the band’s graphics and album artwork and so, unsurprisingly, delivered nostalgic and evocative visuals that reflected the

band perfectly. These were also tinged with the gritty, moody feel of the graphic novel ‘Sin City’, in keeping with the remarkable skyline set and Appelt’s vision.

“Ai media server number one was the main workhorse and had two active outputs,” explained Greil. “The first was the feed for the four big downstage towers, whose screens displayed the live feed as well as the graphics.

The second was for all the other LED towers, including the upstage towers and towers on either side of the stage.”

The video on the four main downstage towers comprised 302sq metres of PRG 18mm Pixelpitch LED screens, whilst the upstage and sidewing towers were made up of 282 sq metres of PRG 30mm Pixelpitch LED screens.

The second Ai media server functioned as an IMAG feed, allowing Volker Scherz to choose which footage to display on the seven hi-res LED IMAG screens; whether it be the footage passed on by the feed or live video from the multiple camera-operators lined up, front-of-stage.

Between the two primary servers, they “handled quite a number of layers of content in total: on three outputs we had six layers of graphic content”, said Greil.

As a lot of the show’s visuals relied heavily on

EVENT FOCUS: Bad Uncles

Below: The Avolites Media Ai Media Servers at FOH.

live camera feeds, the Ai media servers’ latency needed to be up to scratch. “I think we had about 1.5-2 frames latency with the Ai servers, which was excellent,” he said. On top of everything else, the second server also pixel mapped the show’s 323 SGM LED baton lighting fixtures, routing all six packs from the lighting system into the content to generate one big look over everything. Greil and Döhring also used the servers to alienate the live feeds from 26 cameras and add texture or other colours to get creative views of the camera feeds. “It was great to have this node-based system, because Thomas was able to develop his own effects. On top of the Ai Media servers’ incredible power and ability to handle a show of this size with no malfunctions whatsoever, the versatility in customisation they offered was fantastic.”

So, after such a colossal reunion show, what’s next for the Bad Uncles? “Now we start planning for next year - the band wants to come back with something spectacular,” said Appelt, as if the Hockenheimring was just a warm-up. If that’s the case, we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

TPi www.onkelz.de www.einsteinandsons.com www.stageco.com www.prg.com, www.claypaky.it www.malighting.com www.avolites.com http://sgmlight.com www.vari-lite.com

32