Tag: stagecraft

Audio Visual Technology and the Exhibitions Industry

James_BarnettGuest blogger James Barnett is a former Audio Visual Consultant and New Media Graduate researching the evolution of Digital Technologies in niche industries. The article was submitted on behalf of Exhibition Stand Contractors Nimlok who design and supply high-impact custom modular exhibition stands that get your brand noticed on the exhibition show floor

Audio Visual technology played a significant role within major global events of 2012. Both the Democrat and Republican conventions utilized the technology as a vital tool to nominate their leaders. The events were broadcast to millions of Americans and the footage was transmitted to almost every news outlet around the world. With the stakes set so high, a technological failure would have catastrophic consequences– resulting in a failure to communicate a party’s message.

AV ExhibitsLondon 2012 also stands out as an Audio Visual spectacle, with the Olympics’ coverage featuring the transmission of the athlete’s performance around the globe as countries celebrated the games. One of the most notable elements of the critical AV coverage was the huge video wall present. Capturing both these events in real-time provides a unique public experience which can influence, enthuse and arouse emotion amongst the world’s population. AV technology is undoubtedly predominant on the global events stage, but it is equally important within smaller exhibitions where the role that digital media takes has undergone a transformation in this industry.

The Guardian’s B2B network recently held a live debate to examine these changes as businesses seek to diversify their customer engagement through interactive AV technologies. The role of the exhibition has been able to extend itself from an exclusive business meeting to a global PR campaign which has social interactivity as an accessible feature integrated into its AV. Digital displays serve as marketing tools for brand exposure and can demonstrate a products potential and encourage audience participation. The digital revolution may have been a famous phrase of the 1990’s yet not all businesses are realising its potential to engage consumers in the exhibitions industry.

Let’s consider the development of Brand Engagement, Social Media and Augmented Reality through the Audio Visual medium and how small exhibitors can leverage this technology to the public.

Brand Engagement

AV ExhibitAn exhibitor stand can harness a brands power through a digital display and interactive interface. Digital displays provide a contemporary approach to display marketing. Customers are drawn to the exhibitor stand and are subsequently more likely to engage with the stand staff. Web interfaces and interactive flash games can mirror the brands personality and provide a focal point and engagement tool for your stand.

Social Media

Accessing social media through the interface encourages consumers to promote the product which is great brand exposure. Social tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest; should be at the heart of the live marketing strategy and encourage product information to trend. The brands success is dependent upon a genuine consumer relationship and the product excitement can be marketed before, during and after the show. Encourage all audience members to participate.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality blurs the lines between what is real and computer generated and applications which enhance the customer experience could become the most revolutionary aspect of the exhibitions industry. Exhibitors are currently using smart phone applications to add a dimension to their display, turning them interactive and providing virtual environments within the exhibitor booth.

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Live Music Festivals

Why You Should Use An Analog F.O.H. Desk For All-Day Live Music Festivals

Article by Paul Konikowski, CTS-D

Wilco at the Newport Folk Festival, July 2012

I’m sure most of my readers have been to a music festival of some sort.  But if you haven’t had the pleasure of working a multi-day music festival, you are really missing out on some fun times.  I haven’t worked live shows in years, and every time I attend a big festival, I kinda wish I was on the clock.  The best word to describe working summer festivals is “epic”. It’s not uncommon for sound engineers and technicians to work three or four 20+ hour days in pounding heat and/or rain; wiring up ten or more bands on each stage, each day. Then pack up the trucks and do it again, that’s rock n’ roll, baby.

Back when I worked these larger outdoor live music festivals, I was often the guy who made sure the microphones and DI boxes were placed and wired correctly for each band.  “Check one, two” <- that was me. The festivals often had  “big stages” and “small stages”, each with its own unique stage name coined by some underpaid marketing intern, and I would work all of them. (The stages, not the interns.)  The big stages had bigger PA systems and bands, but the same festival “rules” applied no matter which stage you were working.

If there were more than two or three bands on a given stage, only one band got to do any sort of sound check before performing.  The rest of the acts just had to play their first song, while the Front of House (FOH) engineer scrambled to dial in the mix that the audience is hearing, and the monitor engineer tried to please the musicians on the stage, who often got their own mix.

When I worked these festivals, both the FOH mixing console and the monitor consoles were analog, often matching Yamaha 4K’s, Crests, Soundcrafts, or Midas Heritages, each with the appropriate number of outboard reverbs, compressors, limiters, and gates, often used on drums and vocals, not to mention the racks of third octave equalizers.  You literally had a knob, button or fader for everything, and the only things digital were the loudspeaker crossovers and maybe a new stereo reverb/delay unit.

The lead FOH engineer and local sound crew on the stage would agree in advance to a festival input list that would cover 99% of all the bands microphones and instrument channels.  Snare Top was always Snare Top and Snare Bottom was always Snare Bottom, all day, every band, all weekend.  Spare inputs were always left open on the input list for curve balls thrown by the bands: visiting guest musicians, vocoders, or personal wireless headsets.

The drums would sound great all day, because the same microphones, inputs, compressors, and gates would be used all day.  Even if the bands were not sharing the backline drum kit (which saves a lot of time), the various drum kits would still sound good, with some sound engineers tweeking the settings slightly as the weekend went on.  Each engineer could see the outboard gates and compressors working as the lights blinked on and off, and the previous engineer would tell the next engineer what was patched in where.  Snare Top was Snare Top, and Snare Bottom was Snare Bottom. If you were unfamiliar with a FOH mixing console, or just rusty, it was easy enough to figure it out in a few seconds or a few questions.  It was fun to mix on a different desk, you just had to find the knob, button or fader.  It was all there, no surprises.

Nowadays, with the advent of digital mixing consoles, the learning curve of each desk is a lot longer for an engineer.  There is a much bigger fear factor when mixing on a new digital board, especially in a festival environment.  The outboard pieces of gear have been replaced by digital compressors, limiters, and reverb that are built into the FOH console.  The knobs and faders are shared between channels, which can can be easy rearranged so they show up in whatever order the engineer wants.  The settings for each channel are often hidden behind other layers, so it is not obviously where the compressors, gates, and reverbs are set at.  Some digital consoles offer automatic gain control and preset EQ’s for various instruments.  Where is the fun in that?

Most digital consoles now have the ability to save all the settings of your “mix” onto a USB memory stick (aka thumb drive) or SD card. Its not uncommon for a given band’s FOH engineer to start their day’s mix using a mix from an earlier performance, from the previous night, or a year earlier in the same venue.  How lame!  The biggest problem with this digital attitude is that you really don’t know where exactly you are starting your mix from.  Its like making your own pizza, but starting with a mystery frozen pizza from a previous night, that already has sauce and cheese and toppings on it.

There are basically two ways a digital FOH consoles can completely ruin the sound at an all-day music festival:

1. The FOH engineer for a particular band is familiar with the festival’s digital mixing console, so he or she pulls out a thumb drive with the mix settings from an earlier show, which was from an indoor venue, with a completely different FOH sound system and channel lineup.  The gain and equalizer settings are way off, and oftentimes the inputs don’t match the stage wiring.

2. The band’s FOH engineer has never used the festival’s digital console before, or has very little mixing experience on it or any digital mixing boards.  Working with the local system tech, the FOH engineer finds an old set of presets from a similar band, or just keeps the setting in the console from the last band.  The FOH engineer has no idea where each channel’s limiter, compressor, etc. are set at, because the settings are buried on a different page or layer in the consoles Graphic User Interface (GUI) screen.

The result is Snare Top is no longer Snare Top, and Snare Bottom is not Snare Bottom.  One of them is now Trigger 1 and the other has been inadvertently phase shifted by 180 degrees.  The snare drum sounds like crap for the first song, the second song, the third… In fact, it takes half of a show before the FOH engineer can find the bad setting in the digital console, which could have been located in seconds using an old analog desk and outboard reverbs and compressors.

Am I referring to a particular live music festival?  Yes.  Did the problems continue to happen all weekend on the bigger stage with the fancy new digital console, adversely affecting the sound of each band?  Yes.  Did the smaller stages at that same festival with the analog consoles have these same issues?  No.  Did the smaller stages with the analog desks sound awesome all weekend.  Yes.

What is your experience using digital mixing consoles for all-day live music events?  Please comment below, or email pkav.info@gmail.com.

Radiohead Stage Collapse

“That Could Have Been Me”

Article by Paul Konikowski, CTS-D

Radiohead Stage Collapse
Stage Collapses at Radiohead Concert in Downsview Park, Toronto 16 June 2012, AP Photo

Last Saturday 16 June 2012, as many AV folks were traveling back from the Infocomm show in Las Vegas to thier respective AV States, tragic news spread through the Touring World. Just hours before Radiohead was scheduled to play Downsview Park in Toronto, their outdoor stage collapsed, killing drum technician Scott Johnson at age 33.  Another crew was member hospitalized with a non-life-threatening injury, and two other people were injured and treated at the site.  Anyone who has ever been a stage hand or been on an outdoor stage felt their heart skip a beat when they heard the news.

Now this may sound extremely selfish, but my first thought was, “That could have been me”.  I used to work on a lot of temporary outdoor stages, though nothing as big a Radiohead. I was the guy who said “Check 1, 2, 2, 1, 2”, mic’ing up five or ten bands for music festivals; wiring double-stacked loudspeakers on double-stacked scaffolding; rolling line array speakers through mud up and pushing them up truck ramps; or using lift gates to hoist racks and chain motors into “Rentskes”.  Got my toe stuck in a lift gate once (not my fault, and luckily nothing broken).  Another time, I saw a stagehand accidentally tip a small lighting tower off the stage onto my coworkers head.  He needed a few staples, but luckily he was okay, and forgiving of the stagehand.

But a toe in a liftgate or a lighting tower to the head is peanuts compared to a stage collapsing.  The drum tech, Scott Johnson, died Bro!  Maybe while working a job he loved, and maybe he accepted the risk, but let’s be honest, no one expects a stage to collapse, ever. Here is a computer animation video showing how the stage fell. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t explain why the stage fell, but it still helps you visualize it):

Unlike the Indiana State Fair stage collapse, the weather did not play a factor in the Downsview Park stage tragedy. There was no wind.  No, it appears that the Toronto collapse was due to equipment failure, or more likely human error, and they are still trying to figure out who to blame. They got a Structural Engineer to sign off on the design, but that doesn’t mean he is at fault, as many people are involved in the construction of those stages. Engineers and riggers in the concert industry are trained to be perfect, to design stages and rig them with safety factors of five or ten.  Meaning they should hold five or ten times the amount they are specified to hold, like bridges.  Someone skipped Statics Class and got their math wrong, or missed a crucial step in the rigging process. According to Pollstar, the folks doing the lighting expressed concerns prior to the incident.  The tragedy caused great sadness to the band who released this statement. Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, spoke about the incident before covering Radiohead’s Knives Out that same evening in Toronto:

Everyone knows that the touring concert industry has taken a big hit in the recent economy.  With the price of oil directly driving up the cost of trucking, and more young people opting to download music for free instead of attending live shows, concert promoters are forced to think creatively, and cut costs wherever they can. But going with the lowest bidder or the cheapest stagehands sometimes results in a dead guy. Please figure out who screwed up this time, and make an example of him or her, so this never happens again.

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