THE BRIT AWARDS 2008

Staged at Earls Court on February 20 and attracting a massive TV audience, the 2008 BRITS was notable for victories by Take That, Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash, Mika, Kylie, Kanye West, Adele, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson, the first non-singer to win Best British Male Solo Artist.

    McCartney, who received the Outstanding Contribution to Music accolade and closed the show with a selection from his 45-year catalogue of hits, summed up the mood of the night when he said: “British music is the best.”

    Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, with help from son and daughter Jack and Kelly,  hosted the show from their own on-stage ‘OzzyWorld residence’ — an Addams Family mansion-meets-Beckingham Palace creation designed by Mark Fisher as part of his overall scenic design which featured Glam and Punk theming. Fisher worked in collaboration with TV director Hamish Hamilton and art director Nicoline Refsing of Stufish.

    There were a few shambolic moments that threatened to rival Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood’s 1989 debacle, especially when an alcohol-soaked Vic Reeves arrived at the lectern, but for the most part, the show — which was broadcast live — went smoothly.

    Mick Kluczynski, the event’s technical production manager, must again be applauded for pulling together his team of crew and suppliers — including Britannia Row, PRG Europe, XL Video, Stageco, Blackfriars, Blackout, Steel Monkey, Eat Your Hearts Out, Mojo Barriers, Templine, Showstars, Stage Miracles, Showsec, Show & Event Security and riggers from Outback and Unusual — all of whom played out their parts with maximum efficiency.

    The show is all the better for its recent return to a live broadcast formula, and as Brit Row’s Bryan Grant told us, the excitement of delivering a truly live experience for TV viewers often outweighs the stress: “It adds that frisson. Watch the broadcast and immediately Mika stepped on stage you know it’s a live show.”

    Long-time BRITS sound designer Derrick Zieba noted the effect that the increased widespread use of digital consoles among touring artists has had on this production. He said: “I was very keen to develop an all-digital console concept several years ago when the only real contenders, for me, were the Yamaha PM1D and DiGiCo D5. As that market has evolved we now have many more options and what we found this year was that the performing acts fell into two camps.

    “Mika had been touring with the D5 with its new version 4 software, and he wanted a D5 at each end of the multicore. Then we had Paul McCartney, for whom Pab Boothroyd had been mixing for some time on a Digidesign D-Show.

    “We ended up with an extraordinary plethora of different desks. We kept the Yamaha PM5D to handle all the presentation sound and video elements. The Glam stage had a D5 at each end for Kylie [the only live vocal-to-playback performer] and Amy Winehouse. On the Punk stage, we had a D-Show at FOH and a PM1D on monitors. Jon ‘Grubby’ Callis, who was mixing monitors for McCartney had never used a digital console before, but he appreciated how we were working and did a very good job.

    “I guess that the BRITS will become more complex for us as an increasing amount of engineers turn to digital desks and form preferences.”

    Sennheiser’s industry profile was certainly not harmed by its presence at the BRITS as the provider of mics and radio systems, said Zieba, who remains puzzled by the current ‘bling’ fad. “For some reason, artists seem very keen on having custom ‘blinged’ mics. We had black and white crystal mics for the Osbournes and designs for Kylie, Rihanna and others, so the poor Sennheiser boys spent most of their time re-bodying electronics.

    “Rihanna’s performance was enhanced with a spectacular laser show, however, because of all the crystal work on her mic, every time she sang in rehearsal, it looked as if she was singing into a light bulb, so she had to change to a normal, black-bodied model in order to make the camera shots work!

    The Kaiser Chiefs were a great example how flexible bands can be in a demanding situation such as the BRITS. “They were very keen on the cityscape set design for them by Peter Bingemann [who also created a set for Mika], because it mirrored their video for ‘Ruby’,” said Zieba. “However, the reduced performance area meant that they could not benefit from their normal complement of monitor wedges, and singer Ricky Wilson agreed to move to an in-ear system for the first time ever.”

    For the past few years, Zieba and Brit Row have found that the Electro-Voice X-Line line array system works very well within the design of splitting the room into two halves. “It delivers the required energy to fill Earls Court and I didn’t want to change. We also used an Outline Butterfly system as infill for the VIP area and it delivered exactly what we expected of it. By having a number of zones, we are able to contain the sound very well without any real hot spots, and comply easily with licensing laws governing audio levels.”

    The X-Line was rigged high (to aid camera sightlines) in a left-centre-right combination at the stage end, with several hangs of delays down the cavernous hall. “That high rigging does make it a little more sensitive to tune,” said Chris Peters, who along with Nico Royan took responsibility for system set-up and EQ, “but we’ve been using the new EV matrix control software, NetMax, and that makes life a lot simpler.”

    Brit Row invested in NetMax over a year ago, the software rapidly gaining operator acceptance. “Frankly I wouldn’t be without it now,” confirmed Peters. “The interface is simple to understand; this was effectively a distributed system with multiple delays yet it took no time at all.”

    Pete McGlyn performed his usual masterful tech role on one stage, with Stefan Krista on the other. Other key sound engineers and techs included John Gibbon, Jon Lewis, Graham Blake, John ‘JJ’ James, Chris Coxhead, Chris Morrison and Maurizio Gennari.

    “It was a typically great team effort,” concluded Bryan Grant. “All did a great job and everybody got the reward of hearing Pab Boothroyd make a stunning job of McCartney’s performance.”

VISUALS
With PRG Europe supplying the hardware, Al Gurdon designed a magnificent light show. PRG’s lighting crew boss was Rich Gorrod, and board operators were Ben Cracknell and Nigel Catmur.

    Stufish brought in Blackfriars to fabricate the main stage and presenter area, and Steel Monkey for the performance looks. Meanwhile, Blackout’s Kevin Monks and Chris Brain worked on the project, supplying a host of draping and soft goods.

    Blackout provided numerous items including gold lame swag and drapes for the Glam stage, red and purple velour and decorative ‘trumpets’ in the presenters’ area, red silk was used for the pyramid in Rihanna’s set and a full complement of black draping for the stage, auditorium and backstage areas. The company also supplied copious amounts of velour and voile for the Bruce French-designed, ’80s-themed after-show party.

    For the sixth consecutive year, XL Video supplied all screens and video playback PPU to the event, as well as providing additional video ‘specials’ kit for Kylie, Mark Ronson and Rihanna.

    XL’s project managers were again Chris Saunders and Paul Wood — Saunders co-ordinated the cameras and control, while Paul Wood managed the screen elements and specials. Both worked closely with Mick Kluczynski and his team from MJK Productions, Al Gurdon, Nicoline Refsing from Stufish and Hamish Hamilton’s TV production unit.

    The central screen measured 8.4m x 6m, and the Punk stage screen on stage left was 18m x 4.6m — both were made from Lighthouse R16 16mm resolution LED panels. XL also supplied two flown 20' x 11' relay screens each side of the stage in the auditorium, using Barco FLM R18 HD projectors.

    The PPU was based around a Grass Valley HD Kayak mixer and GV LDK 8000 HD cameras, three of which XL supplied for the show. Ten further HD feeds from the broadcasters, directed by Hamish Hamilton via CTV, were fed into the XL system and used for the live stage I-Mag mixes, cut by Chris Hilson. These were in turn fed on to the centre stage screen, Punk stage screen and relay screens via a Barco Encore control system, programmed and operated by Richard Turner who, amongst many duties, pixel-mapped and formatted all the artist-supplied images and content that was used in the show.

    The control system additionally received VT play-ins from the broadcasters and integrated custom playback content into the show, including graphics, awards nominations packages and announcements, all produced by Hello Charlie.

    Custom playback material and the artists’ content was stored on four dual channel Grass Valley Turbo hard drives and two Catalyst digital media servers and cued via the Barco Event Controller.

    For Kylie’s performance, XL supplied 300 Element Labs VersaTubes mounted on a special 12m x 5m frame. Content was via the main XL Video control system. Rihanna had 70 VersaTubes attached to a four-strutted pyramid structure. Video content for this was stored on one of XL’s Catalyst media servers and operated via the main lighting console.

    For Mark Ronson, XL supplied 32 panels of Barco I12 LED screen made up into two sections, each 3.6m wide by 900mm high, which lined the front of the riser for his band and orchestra. Video content was again fed into the LED panels via the main video control.

TRANSFORMING A BLANK CANVAS
It was quite a week for XL Video and Stageco, who not only supplied to what the Americans quaintly refer to as ‘the Grammys of England’ — they both picked ‘gongs’ of their own at the TPi Awards, three days earlier.

    Stageco worked with MJK Productions to build three separate projects, turning the blank canvas of the empty Earls Court floor into a world-class venue.

    The main stage had to combine enormous visual impact with access for television crews. The 80m x 22m scaffolding structure included ground supports for the video systems. Stageco also provided 5,000m2 of tiered restaurant mezzanine which supported the tables of the many VIP guests, and two banks of tiered restaurant seating elsewhere at Earls Court for the after-show party.

    Although this is the 12th year Stageco and MJK have worked together on the BRITS, the event always presents new challenges. In 2008, the venue had a split tenancy with another event, offering late access to parts of the hall, meaning much of the work had to be organised into two highly intensive shifts of 25 hours each.

    “We had to get this right first time,” said Stageco’s project manager Dirk de Decker. “The logistics of the schedule were planned well in advance, with technical drawings, structural calculations and certification presented before Christmas. In spite of the long shifts, we insisted on the most professional working practices and attention to health and safety was second to none.”

    “Stageco are the best at what they do and I couldn’t imagine working with anyone else on the BRITS,” commented Mick Kluczynski. “This ceremony always presents bands at a very special level and, as ever, Stageco has played its part in one of the world’s best pop awards shows.”  

    Ever the enthusiast, Brit Row’s Bryan Grant remains bullish about the BRITS’ relevance to the contemporary music industry. “Here we are in one of the busiest and most creative periods in the history of British pop music — as busy and fertile as any I can remember since we founded Brit Row in 1975 — and what we find is that people want the live experience. That’s why the BRITS works in live format... that’s why we all go to concerts.”
TPi

Photography by
Mark Fisher, Nicoline Refsing,
and John Marshall
(© 2008 JM Enternational Ltd)