CONCERTS AND TOURING
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W hen fans buy a ticket to see their favourite artist live, they expect to witness the magic that comes with any major live experience. What they don’t see is the weeks, months and often years of preparation it takes to make a world tour not just possible, but unforgettable. LIVE is joined by Phil Mercer , commercial director at Universal Pixels, and Tom Tunney , technology specialist at Skan PA Hire, Clair Global, to have a conversation about all the realities, challenges and evolving technology behind modern touring. SETTING THE STAGE (LITERALLY) Tom Tunney: Positioning the speakers in the correct place to perfectly cover the audience and enhance the concert listening experience sounds simple, until you throw massive video walls, set
panels with ultimately inaccurate colour reproduction. And it’s not just about big screens looking sharp. The perception of immersion comes with the technology, deployed by all the disciplines that make up a show. Sound, lights, video, staging, lasers/FX and stadium screens/lighting etc all have to work harmoniously – and also photograph well on a phone camera. That’s the essence of good technical show design. Tom Tunney: Apart from the networked audio, D&B Audiotechnik’s Array Processing (a software function within the D&B Array Calc simulation software) has been great too. Using the powerful DSP to shape the PA in the room has proved invaluable. LOAD IN, LOAD OUT Phil Mercer: It’s a rarity that a large-scale stadium tour will do a full production load in, show and load out within 24 hours. More often, our team will load in the day before, and there are usually hardware and location-specific programming adjustments to be made. And yes, those tweaks are ideally done during darkness the night before the show, so that the lighting and video cues look right. Finally, any exposed equipment such as cameras need to be covered against the elements. Tom Tunney: If I go out to visit a tour and work in a PA system or audio crew chief role, I would get up with the riggers (early!) to mark out our system positions, liaise with the stage manager and all other departments, unload our trucks, fly the speakers, lay the multicore cables, deploy our subs, troubleshoot anything that isn’t working, time align the system, eat lunch, have a listening session with
Snow Patrol in Brussels (this image), The Chemical Brothers (right), Hozier performing in Liverpool (above right)
structures and custom stage designs into the mix. As production values have become bigger and show design has become paramount for the concert viewing experience, this can present difficulties for the audio team. Phil Mercer: No two stadiums are the same, and often the stages are different too, yet the expectation is that every show is visually identical across the tour. Factoring in widely varying weather conditions and sunset times across an ever-lengthening stadium season, our biggest challenge is consistency. Tom Tunney: Which means your gear can’t just work. It has to adapt. We work from the biggest venue on the tour and ensure the equipment is all in order before it leaves our warehouse. We design a system with individual nuances, as each venue and audience size will be different. In large-scale stadiums, we might deploy delay systems, for example. TOP-TIER AV TOOLKITS Phil Mercer: Same-batch LED is essential. There is no hiding place on single screens of 750 sq m (or more) if it’s made up of different batches of LED
No two stadiums are the same... yet the expectation is that every show is
visually identical across the tour
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