ON THE ROAD: The Saturdays
Below: Systems Technician, Rob Priddle; Touring Production Rigger, Mark Wade; The Saturdays made a dramatic entrance to the stage; A comparison of the finished production beside the initial 3D renders; DiGiCo’s SD8 desk in monitor world.
artists like FloRida and [Gym Class Heroes’] Travie McCoy where we run video content,” he explained. The overall look of these aspects in particular are a mixture of dance pumped club bangers and live pop video action. The Field TV developed the content creation for the live shows, whilst pre-show video footage came via Blink TV. The screens provided by London-based CT
featured the Flyer 18mm design. In particular, it struck a chord with Production Manager, Whitehead, who commented: “I like the Flyer 18mm screen from CT, we’ve used it before and I’ve seen how quick it goes up and how good it actually looks. For what we wanted, it was spot on. It’s the same screen type used on their last theatre tour, but we’ve doubled the quantity for the arena venues.” Also present was a 10 by 4 main screen
with a total of six, 2 by 4 side columns. In addition, two Barco R12 Projectors were used in conjunction with two 16 by 12 CT Fastfold screens. Merser continued: “The girls have dancers
and a backing band, but the focus is the girls, people have come here to see their favourite artists, so it’s literally about making sure I have the right girls at the right time on the screen.” To achieve his precise goal for optimum audience satisfaction in the arena environment, Merser applied the lengthy process guess who. Merser explained the show’s theatrical cue
calling between the video crew: “I have a copy of every one of their songs in lyric form and I worked out who was singing which line so that now I can make sure that we have the cameras ready for whoever is coming next.”
58 • TPi FEBRUARY 2012
For media control, Merser used two
Hippotizer HDi7’s, which were supplied by Neil Trunnell’s Fix8 Group. The video and lighting crews verified that both elements of the tour ran very smoothly. Merser elaborated: “The media servers are run to time code which makes my life easier! It’s all come together well.” Video Engineer, Willis Spencer, Danny Sheldon on camera and projection duties, Rob Brewer as a Camera Operator and LED Tech alongside Tom Copleston, also an LED Tech, completed the video crew.
READY RIGGING Touring Production Rigger, Mark Wade, is The Saturdays’ only road rigger who consequently relied on local riggers at each new venue - four climbing, two grounded - to secure the set design. The truss for the All fired Up outing comprised a combination of brands including James Thomas Engineering’s A type truss, Prolyte drop frames and Tomcat. The job took just 2.5 hours to get all the
points in. Said Wade: “This is one of the easiest show I’ve rigged in 15 years, but it helps when you have such good riggers.” A leveling laser is Wade’s most useful tool,
he admitted. “But saying that, I didn’t have one when I first started! It does speed things up, but knowledge is key, if local riggers know the venue, it makes my job a lot easier too.” Wade is a pop rigging expert and has
previously rigged for some of Britain’s premier pop acts in the last decade, mostly on Production North tours. “I’ve worked with Boyzone, Westlife, Girls Aloud and the X Factor stars,” said Wade. “If there’s a big pop band out
there, I’ve probably worked on it.” Wade also looked after the minimal
automation duties required for the show. For motion control, he operated an Ibex programmable hoist controller system, which featured an enhanced control panel and integrated Ethernet port. The Ibex ran 24 channels of computerised control in a 3U case, and had a digital load cell port for weight measurement with overload and underload protection features. It was used to operate the lift, which featured at the beginning of the show. Wade lowered the lift onto the stage for The Saturdays’ initial appearance to the audience. Production Manager Whitehead concluded
TPi’s visit with an explanation of what keeps his production company in such demand on the pop circuit. “We know that what makes these shows and our company successful is the people who work on them. It’s all about the crew and the service companies that we use. The rest of it isn’t rocket science, it’s very straightforward. The guys we use have often worked with us before, and for those who haven’t - certainly on this tour - we’ve been happy with what they’ve done and would use them again. The suppliers on this tour including CT, HSL, Over The Top, Wigwam & Snakatak - we’ve used on a multitude of tours before.” TPi
Photography by Zoe Mutter
www.productionnorth.co.uk hslgroup.com
www.fix8group.com www.ctlondon.com
www.wigwamacoustics.co.uk
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