Dec. 1, 2007 was World Aids Day, a day set aside by the World Health Organization to raise awareness of the global AIDS epidemic, and Gearhouse South Africa was busy supplying design, full technical production and crew for the 46664 Concert staged in Johannesburg’s Ellis Park Stadium.
The number 46664 was Nelson Mandela’s prison number from 1964 to 1990, when he was jailed for his activism against apartheid. Mandela is now a major force in the campaign to raise awareness of AIDS, and was joined at this event by a line-up of leading local and international performers, including Just Jinger, Freshly Ground, Johnny Clegg, Jamelia, Corrine Bailey Rae, Goo Goo Dolls, Razorlight, Live, Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox.
Accompanied by the empowering slogan, “It’s in Our Hands,” some 40,000 music fans in the stadium and millions worldwide heard Mandela’s address, listened to the music, and watched a visual tour de force.
Lighting & Visuals
Gearhouse director Tim Dunn designed the stage set, lighting and visuals for the event. He faced many challenges, such as the need to make sure the event worked well visually for the cameras and for the IMAG-viewing audience, with video segments directed by Aubrey “Po” Powell. Another challenge was building enough flexibility into the system to keep each act looking fresh and different, particularly for the after-dark section, while also creating an eye-catching design that worked in daylight.
Dunn wanted the aesthetics to be contemporary, distinctive and totally different from the 2003 inaugural concert in Cape Town. The gently curvaceous, super-wide result presented an epic sense of spectacle.
The main stage was 25 meters wide, and ramps extending from stage left and right allowed for an extended performance area. To ensure sufficient eye candy and depth for the cameras, particularly during the daylight section of the show, Dunn designed curved LED columns at the heart of the 18-meter central stage revolve. The custom-made column frames were loaded with Optiscreen VP10 modules, with five on each side of the revolve. Above these was a strip of Lighthouse R16 LED, used to display text slogans, that were 12.2 meters wide and 1.52 meters high.
Overhead, the main architectural elements of the lighting rig were six upstage/downstage trusses curving downward at the downstage edge. Robe ColorWash 2500 moving lights were rigged onto the curved ends and used for the high-level key lighting of performers. From there, the instruments could light any part of the stage. Eighteen Martin Atomic strobes were positioned on the back of these trusses. In between were five straight trusses, rigged at a higher trim and fully loaded with PARs. These were used for general stage wash coverage.
Dunn used a combination of over 200 moving lights, a mix of Robe, Martin and High End fixtures scattered all over the rig, including some on the floor and others illuminating the complex set elements. He also used 62 i-Pix Satellite LED “bricks” to tone the set and trusses, while the main onstage set pillars were illuminated with Martin MAC 250 Wash fixtures and High End Studio Color 575s. Dunn also rigged 24 8-lite blinders around the top perimeter of the set for blasting into the audience.
At FOH, Dunn worked closely with lighting director Hugh Turner, who ran three MA Lighting grandMA consoles. One controlled the show lighting, one ran a host of digital media created and stored in two grandMA digital media servers and the third provided audience and additional TV lighting, plus backup. The total fixture count topped 616, featuring over 4,500 parameters among them, consuming 12 DMX512 universes.
Dunn acknowledges that it was a big team effort to get the visuals spot on. Major team players Chris Grandin and Marcel Wijnberger from Gearhouse Media created additional custom video content for the show, including the 46664 logo and slogan for the LED Screens.
Pete Currier was Gearhouse’s daytime project manager for lighting and set. He coordinated all the disciplines involved in the installation and setup and ensured the correct interpretations took place among the creative/design elements and the logistics required. To do this, he worked with up to 170 different people each day as the build gathered pace and intensity. Candice Scott took over as the night project manager for the round-the-clock project.
Screens & LED
Gearhouse sister company LEDVision supplied all the LED screens. LED Director Richard Baker supervised the proceedings. He was stationed in one of three OB trucks for the show, mixing the screens via Gearhouse’s new Vista Spyder in 1920 x 1080 resolution HD.
He had feeds from eight cameras operated by the South African Broadcasting Co. (SABC), off-site pre-edited material from the production companies stored on two EVS machines, and custom content made by 46664’s production company on another EVS. There were also two feeds from the grandMA digital media servers being run by the lighting crew.
Baker worked closely with Dunn to keep continuity between the lighting design and the screens onstage. Consistent with the general trend toward mixing the two mediums, Baker and Dunn collaborated on a harmonized interplay of show visuals created by stage lighting and video technology.
All the inputs went to three sub-mixes in the van before being routed to Gearhouse’s Vista Spyder controller for outputting to screen. Additionally, there was a live Web site feed tracking all the public text messaging, which was filtered and then sent to the Spyder. This gave Baker control of the overall graphics backgrounds, so when Po went to a wide shot of everything onstage, Baker could switch to one coherent look across the screen surfaces.
Baker also had Po’s IMAG mix (being cut in another OB truck) coming to him in the OB truck, and this was output to the two side stage 7.11- by 3.81-meter Lighthouse R16 IMAG screens below the main P.A. rig. In addition to the stage and side screens, LEDVision provided two 5.08- by 3.05-meter Lighthouse R16 delay screens positioned off the FOH tower for the benefit of the crowd further back.
Baker worked with local operations manager Allen Evans, U.K.-based LED screen technician Pete Ewans and 11 other crew members with LEDVision. Their challenge was to deploy LED equipment over the various LED–intensive events during the same period across the country, including a major soccer event which took place a week earlier in Durban.
The complexity of the set design, built by Gearhouse’s In2 Structures, added to the challenge of integrating the various video elements used for the show.
Power
Gearhouse Power’s Anthony Sackstein was responsible for ensuring enough generated electricity at Ellis Park to handle all the technical production’s requirements for the show. The event was split into four different zones of power sources and supplies. The first was a 1200-amp 3-phase supply (4 x 300kVA) for generic lighting. The second was the stage right automation supply (2 x 300kVA), which dealt with all the moving lights on that side of stage plus anything with a ballast or running DMX. This was mirrored by a similar supply on stage left. The fourth supply consisted of two 250KVA sets for audio, AV and LED screens. Each of these four supplies was synchronized to a back up generator as an additional precaution.
Eighteen runs of close to 100 meters of mains cable were run around the venue, including two at 150 meters and one at 200 meters. Gearhouse Power had four techs on site including a wireman, two electricians and one power technician.
It was one of the first outings where Gearhouse Power needed to deploy five of its newest fully synchronizable, trailer-mounted Caterpillar generators, which worked in tandem with generators from outside suppliers.
Rigging
Anthony Banks, operations manager for Gearhouse Rigging, head rigger Graham Brooking, and six additional on-site riggers handled the show’s rigging requirements. They had 84 points of rigging in total, including lighting, screens and P.A., and they used a variety of one- and two-ton CM Lodestar hoists. The main StageCo roof was loaded almost to capacity with 19 tons of lighting and screen, most of it hanging from the front, where weight distribution along the roof trusses was a major challenge.
Staging
Chris Loeijs coordinated the stage erection, based on a standard StageCo configuration with some special elements. He worked with four senior crew, four juniors and about 20 locals. Measuring 70 meters side-to-side with 1200 square meters of decking and 250 tons of steel, the wings were a little higher than standard to carry the extra load. It was five towers wide rather than the normal four to accommodate an additional five tons of lighting and screens on the main span. The 12.9 meters of headroom offered plenty of scope for the lighting and stage set to look its best, with the whole construction standing at around 18 meters in height.
The construction also included an impressive 120 square meters per side of backstage and offstage storage facilities, plus another 100 square meters at the back. Two ramps were built for backstage access: a steeper one on stage right for the load-in, and a gentler version on stage left for the get-out. They also installed over 300 meters of crowd barrier and 120 square meters of rolling risers.
The revolve was built by Lee Irving from Gearhouse In2Structures. Measuring 18.3 meters in diameter and weighing 13 tons, it turned on two 5.5 kilowatt motors, optimized to perform the maneuver in a relaxed 68 seconds, although it could rotate the 180 degrees in as little as 10 seconds.
In2Structures also manufactured and built various set pieces, including the metal ‘trees,’ the Optiscreen column cages and the huge printed scrims on the set and below the LED Screens either side of the stage. Joburg Set Company built the scenic columns along the front of the stage and the decking around the revolve.
Production
Gearhouse’s Ofer Lapid asked U.K.-based production manager Nick Levitt to take on the role of production director for the event. He worked with production managers Kenny Underwood (U.K.), Micky Lehr (South Africa) and stage manager Nick Rea.
Levitt had worked extensively with Gearhouse over the years and was also involved in the first 46664 in Cape Town. He brought in Technical Manager Nick Evans to help oversee the engineering and health and safety aspects of the build. Locally-based Lehr was the liaison with the stadium and local authorities, and dealt with most of the site management issues, including dressing rooms, portable buildings and site layout.
Levitt came on site two weeks before the event. “It’s totally different to working in Europe or the U.S., and the pace and the resources are not the same. But it’s gone extremely smoothly, and it’s been great to work with Gearhouse,” he said.
Lehr describes working at the Ellis Park site as similar to “doing F1 in Monaco,” with real estate at a premium and everyone wanting a piece of the action. He was also the link between everything happening onstage and local promoters Real Concerts.
One of the complications was that Ellis Park is still under construction as part of a major refurbishment, so in addition to his own staff of more than 100 workers, Lehr had to contend with hundreds of construction workers and their plant all over the place throughout the build process. It was also six years since the last gig there, and their official move-in date was a scant two weeks before the show.
Security was exceptionally tight, due to the VIP list, but the event’s organizers had ample support from the City of Johannesburg, which paid for staging the event, and also from the Metro Police Services and the South African Police Services.
46664 Johannesburg proved that South Africa has the creative and technical production talent to host a globally significant, world-class multi-media event.
