Snowbusiness

07 May 2010 15.44 BST

TPi reports on the rising production values of the alpine snowfest Snowbombing...

After celebrating a decade in operation in 2009, Austria’s alpine festival Snowbombing evolved once again this year by bringing in new suppliers and different technology. Award-winning VJ, projection and installation specialist Immersive (formerly inside-us-all) came on board for the first time to create bespoke visuals for both the headline shows in main arena, the Racket Club, and for the Forest Party and Street Party.

LED Screen Hire also contributed for the first time by providing two Lighthouse R7-ER LED screens, and it was the Snowbombing debut for the d&b J-Series line array, which was road tested in an indoor environment by suppliers Audile, who are looking to purchase a system.
Promoted by Outgoing, under the direction of Gareth Cooper, Snowbombing is produced by events agency Ear to the Ground, with Jon Drape as director and Tom Sabin as production manager. Attracting 3,500 people this year, the festival was spread across the resort at various venues, outdoor stages and even featured a mountain top party in a specially made igloo that was this year graced by sets from Fatboy Slim and Caged Baby, amongst others.

The Racket Club, an indoor tennis court split into two music rooms, played host to live sets from Editors, Friendly Fires, The Enemy, The Whip and Doves, as well as DJ sets by 2ManyDJs, Vitalic, Example, Wild Beasts, Dan Le Sac v Scroobius Pip and The Cuban Brothers between April 5-10 at the Mayrhofen ski resort. The Forest Party, which took place on the Friday night, saw DJ Yoda, De La Soul and Fatboy Slim perform DJ sets in a specially constructed stage in a forest clearing. Fatboy Slim’s rider dictated that the Forest stage would require a large, high resolution LED screen at the back of the stage.

Barrington said: “LED Screen Hire came up with the goods. We had Lighthouse out here last year with Pictureworks and it happens to be what LED Screen Hire use too. We wanted to utilise it as much as possible so we’ve had the guys working hard to move it around.” The 7mm panels were stacked and used as a lighting effect for the pre-show party at the Racket Club, then repositioned for the live shows, whilst a few panels were moved for the Street Party for either side of the DJ booth, before coming together as one big 6 x 5 screen at the Forest finale.

LED Screen Hire’s Mark Gent said: “There are lots of small manufacturers of LED screen, but what sorts the wheat from the chaff is reliability, the picture quality, the type of LEDs they use and also how closely matched they are, because when you put a big 6 x 5 screen together like we had on the Forest Stage, your eyes are extremely sensitive to colour difference. Lighthouse is a bit more expensive, but they’re reliable and are an industry standard.”

Production Eye’s Simon Barrington designed the stage shows this year, widening out the Racket Club’s stage (supplied by Germany-based Conrad Staging, with barriers from Mojo Barriers) by increasing the lighting rig and adding two projection screens flown left and right, provided by Audile. From Wednesday the Racket Club, which was stage managed by Ear to the Ground’s Fran Martin, also featured a central circular Sanyo XF47 projector from LED Screen Hire. “We try and step it up every single year,” explained Barrington. “We have four trucks this year [supplied by Stardes], compared to one transit van four years ago, so it’s grown enormously.”

Although Sabin admits it’s not a particulary well-paid event for the production suppliers, it comes with the added benefit of free skiing and a bit of a holiday. “We try and make it fun for the crew, even though it’s immensely hard work,” he said. Immersive was one such company keen to take up the offer. Barrington commented: “I have worked with them on the Pendulum tour and I think their work is fantastic.”

Immersive’s Mark Calvert, whose team included Ralph Lambert, Martin Harvey, Gianni Fabricio and Ste Jones, commented: “We’re good friends with Simon Barrington and LD Alan King, who did the Deadmau5 tour with us, so we knew each other really well and what worked and what didn’t. They gave us the impression it was going to be a freeform event where we would chop and change styles because of the bands and DJs, but that didn’t happen because when the bands arrived the day before, they realised there was a good AV set up, so we ended up doing bespoke clips for Editors, Friendly Fires and Metallic. Because we’re all animators, production people and VJs, we can do that really quickly on the cuff, of course budget and lead time improve the results!”

Immersive used its proprietary Pixel Addicts media server for the job, which is the first re-programmable media server using the Salvation AV engine. The system features a purpose-built media controller with motorised faders, a quick scan jog wheel and T-Bar and a toughened 19 touch screen. The user can see and design all aspects of the event in the visualiser before, during or after the show in real time. The server has the capacity to control multiple HD/PAL outputs, output custom aspect ratio footage, map/warp any 3D surface, provide audio reactive content, master/slave to other Addict servers or DMX based show control systems, control moving head projectors, playback any media format and synchronise to time code input. Immserive pixel mapped the LED and projection screens using the Addict media server as the VJ station. Most of the graphics were sourced from its stock library of around 4,000 clips in HD, except for the custom designs for certain acts. Hippotizers were also employed for some of the acts in the Racket Club.

d&b DEBUT

Audile, who supplied all the lighting, sound and required engineers for the event, installed a sub-hired, stacked d&b J-Series in the main room for the first time, where Stev ran FOH and Ben ‘Curly’ Emissah was on monitors, assisted overall by Kevin Gill.

Audile’s Rob Ashworth explained the new addition: “For a couple of years now we've been increasingly experiencing market pressure to add a line array system to our hire inventory, specifically to provide for live events. While we've enjoyed great success with the Funktion One system over the past nine years — in live applications like the main stage of Camp Bestival as well as the dance events that Funktion
One tends to be associated with — it has of course become practically de-facto for live events to be serviced with line arrays in recent years.”

Ashworth considered it inevitable that they would add a line array to the company’s stock and about a year ago identified the J-Series system as their preferred option. He said: “We want a system that's acceptable to 99% of clients, and that basically

boils down to d&b or L-Acoustics. With V-Dosc no longer available and the K1 package out of our price range, the choice comes down to J-Series or Kudo. Cross-hireability ultimately swings things in favour of J-series; we want a sizeable stock of boxes in our local area to supplement our system with easily when the need arises, and for J-Series that stock is there at Wigwam.

“We gave the system a field test on the second stage at Camp Bestival, and were very pleased with the results. Reaction from engineers, artists, audience and promoters was great.”

Sabin agreed: “It’s amazing, it’s a great system.”

The company is now close to making the final decision on a sizeable investment in J-Series. “When it came to Snowbombing, we'd planned to use Funktion One again in the Racket Club, but this year it transpired that Snowbombing clashed with the Warehouse Project back in Manchester, meaning a sizeable chunk of our Funktion One inventory was commited back home. So we took the opportunity to give the J-series a try in a different environment to Camp Bestival, indoors rather than out, ground-stacked rather than flown, and with heavyweight DJ performances alongside the bands,” Ashworth explained.

The Racket Club system comprised eight d&b J-8 mid/hi speakers, four J-12s, 12 J-Subs, with four D12 amp racks and processing via an XTA GQ-600. Stev mixed the acts on a Midas Heritage-3000 console, with an insert/FX rack running a Lexicon PCM-80, TC M-2000, TC D-2, SPX-990, two XTA G2 gates, two Drawmer DS-201 gates, two XTA C2 comps and two BSS DPR-402 comps.

Over on monitors, Curly was using a Yamaha M7-CL console to create a mix for the 12 Turbosound TFM-450 monitor speakers, Audile CS-215 drum sub and IEM systems, for which Audile provided two Sennheiser EW-300s packages. Audile also supplied a variety of Shure, Sennheiser, Beyer, Audio Technica and BSS mics.

Ashworth went on to talk about the benefits of the d&b system: “The initial thing that strikes you about the system as you first build it is how nicely it all goes together; the flying system particularly is a work of art. The integration of the D12 amps and the R1 network software with the system is great too. The system check feature that tests the connected loads and identifies any faults is particularly impressive. Also the Arraycalc prediction software which is very comprehensive and clear and simple to use. The directivity control, both of the line elements and the cardoid J-Subs, is fantastic, and the coverage is very smooth and even.

“Our favourite feature, though, is the consistency that's engineered into the system. An important part of the d&b 'System Reality' is that the results the system delivers are reproducable worldwide, which means that every system uses the same speakers, amplifiers and settings, with the only adjustable parameters being those that need to be adjusted.

“Some people find this approach a bit militant, but our past experience has been that when a manufacturer recommends amplifiers, processors and settings rather than imposing them, consistency between different users can be a serious problem. One bad experience of a poorly set-up system is enough to turn people against it for ever, and the manufacturers who lead the market are those who do everything they can to eliminate this possibility.”

FOH sound engineer Stev added: “The other enhancement was the sub performance of the system, mainly due to the cardoid dispersion of the J-Subs.”


GAME, SET, LIGHTS

A bespoke bomb-shaped truss structure with rectangular rear truss
framing the artists and two angled horizontal trusses flown close to the
roof flew most of the lighting in the Racket Club, with additional
fixtures on the floor uplighting the action and others perched on top of
the stacked LED screens dotted around the stage. Alan King, under
lighting crew chief Rob Leach and assisted by Steve Barnett, ran the
show from an Avolites Pearl Expert control desk with a Hippotiser
pixel-mapping the LED fixtures, an Anytronics dimmer rack and two Light Processor Q-Buffer DMX buffers.

A variety of lighting fixtures included 50 x Chroma-Q DB-4 ColourBlock LED units, 48 Chroma-Q ColourWeb 250 LED panels, six Clay Paky AlphaBeam 700s, eight Martin MAC-700 Profiles, 12 High End StudioBeam PCs, eight Martin MAC-250 Entours, eight Martin MAC-300s, eight Martin Atomic-3000 strobes, two Studio Due CS-4 moving ACL bars, four bar-of-6 Thomas PAR-64 1kWs, four Thomas 4-lite Molephay blinders, eight Thomas 2-lite Molephay blinders and six Source Four Junior profiles.

The Clay Paky AlphaBeam 700s were a new purchase for Audile. Commented Ashworth: “While we principally use MAC-700 Profiles alongside the still-excellent High End StudioBeam PCs, last year we were impressed with the new type of effect offered by Clay Paky's AlphaBeam 300, and sub-hired these units frequently. When the 700 version was released, offering much brighter output from the same compact body as the 300 version, we got hold of a demo unit and were very impressed — even in the noise department!”

These fixtures were deployed in the Racket Club, for the Street Party and the Forest Party on the last night. Said Ashworth: “The output is the main attraction; they're bright enough to have serious impact on daylight stages, and alongside bright LED video screens. For such a powerful unit they're ridiculously small and light, and movement is both extremely fast and smooth.” At the Forest Party they were placed on the roof of the stage, where their long-range beam effects were projected through the sky and onto the surrounding mountains.

NARNIA

It was the third Snowbombing for Acre Jean, who provided the acoustic draping. Said the company’s Dan Hill: “Normally we provide black wall surge draping to partition the two areas in the Racket Club, but what they found with having a sound system in one and a live stage in the other was that they were getting sound leakage between the two areas. So this time around as well as providing the black wall serge drapes we provided some acoustic felts, which is a fabric specifically designed to help prevent sound leakage and as a result they were able to run two events with different sounds in the two areas without them interfering with one another.”

The small partitioned area in the Racket Club was transformed by a skilled freelance crew; décor designer/ rigger Iain Findlay and set designer / carpenter Nic Wareham (company name Caboodle Do), as well as Jacqui Findlay, Nicci Dodge and Jay Hodgetts. Christmas trees, life-size lions and carriage seating created an other-worldy Narnia theme. A Funktion One sound system, based on four Res-4s and four F-218 subs, provided audio in Narnia for DJs and live acts on the Monday only. MC2 and XTA provided amplification and processing, whilst two db Technologies DVX DM15 powered speakers handled monitoring and Pioneer dominated the DJ set up, as it did elsewhere.

An Avolites Pearl Tiger console manned by Tim Hawes controlled the lighting rig, which comprised Clay Paky Miniscan HPEs, a Martin Atomic-3000 strobe, 24 Pulsar ChromaSphere LED globes, four Pulsar ChromaDome LED spots, eight Source Four Junior profiles, eight PAR-64s, as well as effects from two LTE UV cannons and a Look Unique 2 hazer.

FATBOY IN THE FOREST

After dropping out of the festival in 2009, Fatboy Slim made it up the mountain this year to headline the Forest Party on the Friday night, playing a high energy set to a stunning visual backdrop. The Street Party’s Funktion One sound system and lighting rig, which was similar to the Racket Club’s and operated on an Avolites Pearl 2004 console by Rob Leach, was transported to the forest clearing and added to for the show. Sixteen of Funktion One’s Res-5 mid/hi speakers and eight F-221P powered subs provided the sound for Fatboy Slim, De La Soul and DJ Yoda, with MC2 amps, XTA drive racks, and a Soundcraft MH-3 console at FOH, operated by Rob Ashworth. Craig Williams operated the Yamaha LS-9/32 console over in monitor world, feeding the six Ohm BR-15MS monitor speakers.

The other crew members that made it happen were head of security Alex Knight, site assistant Paul Sabin, and from Ear to the Ground; Gina Hewitt, Michele Thomson, Rebecca Hodgkinson, Benjamin Ramasami, Mark Thompson, Benjamin Johnstone (of Production Eye) and Sam Pepper.

Photography by Rachel Esson and Jamie Baker.
http://www.immersive.eu/
www.audile.co.uk
www.screenhire.com