GREYTOWN, South Africa – For the third year running, Gearhouse South Africa supplied full technical production for the annual Mighty Man Conference. Gearhouse was again working for The Shalom Trust and in collaboration with its technical coordinator, Nik Fairclough of Northwind Recording, who also mixed the FOH sound. Gearhouse's project manager was Eyal Yehezkely. He oversaw a crew of 28 handling audio, AV and screens, power, lighting and staging. The project management included internal and on site logistics, surveying and GPS mapping of the site, detailed layouts, design of the crowd seating, positioning of delay towers and structures and producing comprehensive site plans.
The primary technical challenge – with an expected audience of up to 400,000 – was to ensure that all could clearly see and hear what was happening onstage from wherever they were sitting. The stage and site layout was completely different from last year, with an ‘end on' stage and a wide amphitheatre created for the audience, radiating outwards at 170 degrees from the stage in a trapezoidal shape.
With the most distant crowd members potentially 470 meters from the stage and a 162 000 square meter audience area to cover, a comprehensive network of sound and daylight video screen delays was necessary.
Gearhouse's screen specialist company, LEDVision, provided screens. LEDVision's Allen Evans proposed using portrait format screens to optimize the available viewing space for I-Mag, and that strategy proved particularly effective for the relay of Angus Buchan's speeches, the main focus of the three-day event.
LEDVision provided a total 278 Lighthouse R16 LED panels that were configured onstage as three 5 x 10 panel surfaces, each measuring 5.08m x 7.62m (39m2).
Positioned symmetrically in the outfield – below 4 of the PA delay arrays – were four delay screens, each made up of 4 x 8 R16 panels, measuring 4.064m x 6.096m (25m2). All screens on site were in the same 4:3 aspect ratio, and provided the audience with a total of 217m2 of viewing surface clearly visible from all points of the arena.
Gearhouse AV supplied Barco ScreenPro II switcher, which was used to split the screens into 2 halves with camera feeds of the band on the bottom and lyrics on the top for the hymn singing sessions. Members of the Shalom Trust video team under Allen Evans' supervision operated the Panasonic MX70 mixer. A number of laptops with different source material were hooked into the system, and the nine cameras and the OB unit were supplied by God TV, which broadcast over their TV network.
The screen system utilized Lighthouse LIP processors, 2.2 kilometers of high grade data cabling and had a total combined weight of 21 tonnes.
LEDVision also provided a BARCO B10 mobile LED screen truck that was parked stage right and used to make English and Afrikaans signers visible to 300 deaf and hearing-impaired members of the audience. The completely self contained trailer has its own 18 KVA generator and weighs 3.5 tons. It carries a 10m2 S-lite XP10 BARCO LED screen.
The Gearhouse Power team was led by Ronnie Malatji. They provided 2 x 300KVA synched generators for audio and LED screens, 2 x 100 KVA synched sets for lighting- a combination of PARs, 2K fresnels and i-Pix Satellites were used for a good white light TV ambience- and 2 x 60KVA generators for the far outer audio delays and LED screens.
The power distribution layout was designed by Antony Sackstein, Tom Gordon and Allen Evans, with particular attention paid to ensuring a stable voltage over the long cable runs.
Each supply to 3 delay points was split and run via its own MCB ( Main Circuit Breaker ) so one feed could be isolated in case of a problem . The cable size was upgraded from 70mm to 120mm to compensate for voltage drop and 100 meter long runs were used to reduce the amount joints in the cable. About 2,750 meters of power cable distributed power all around the arena, with additional cables used for the stage.
A further 60 KVA generator powered the backstage area and crew village.
The Gearhouse Structures crew of five, led by Attie Van Staden, built the stage structure, which was constructed from a TFL (Total Fabrications) roofed stage, measuring 18 meters wide by 16 deep, with 15 meters of headroom. The stage deck was 2.5m high, and combined with wings of 6m x 6m each side for technical positions; this offered a total of 360 square meters of performance space.
The stage was designed to give the maximum visibility for all the viewing angles in the natural amphitheatre that was made up of the farm's fields and natural terrain. An open back was incorporated to let the hills behind became a natural backdrop.
All the structures on site weighed 99 tons in total and were delivered by five Super link trucks.
Gearhouse Rigging's crew chief, Vincent Khumalo used a total of 50 x 2 tons motors on site for flying the roof, LED screens and PA.
Concluding, Eyal Yehezkely said, "We used the same crew who had worked on last year's event and saw some amazing teamwork that made everything flow smoothly and efficiently. I think we all benefitted from the experience and knowledge gained from working on the site before and this, plus some rigorous preparation beforehand, helped us deliver even better results."
For more information, please visit www.gearhouse.co.za .
