| March 2008 | |
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DIGICO D5 LIVE - THE BEST OF BRITISH |
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The annual BRIT Awards ceremony is always a highlight of the UK music industry calendar and this year was no exception. It is a very high-pressure project for the audio production team, with the reliability and ease of use of the DiGiCo D5 consoles, once again supplied by Britannia Row Productions, being an essential element of this year’s event. Taking place at Earl’s Court on 20 th February, the 2008 Brit Awards set featured three stages. Flanking the main awards presentation stage was, on one side, the Punk stage, on which the Kaiser Chiefs, Rihanna with the Klaxons and Mark Ronson (joined by Adele, Daniel Merriweather and Amy Winehouse) performed. Meanwhile, on the other side, the Glam stage enjoyed performances by Mika (with The Gossip’s Beth Ditto), Leona Lewis, Kylie Minogue and Amy Winehouse. It was here that The Brits sound designer Derrick Zeiba specified DiGiCo D5s for use at both Front of House and monitors. Having worked on The BRITs for the past two decades, in recent years Derrick pushed to make the entire audio system digital. “One particular year, we had seven analogue consoles at front of house,” he says. “That was obviously a completely unsuitable situation, so for the past six years I’ve insisted that all live performances must use digital consoles. “We specified the D5s for the Glam stage because they cope very well with complex, multiple-band productions. With very limited rehearsal time, they are easy to set up and it’s very straightforward to store and recall the settings for each artist.” Overseen by Maurizio Gennari at FOH and John ‘JJ’ James at the monitor position, each artist brought their own sound engineers and so it was important that they were happy with the choice of console. From this point of view, the key artist was Mika. “Kylie and Leona were both singing to an HD playback mix, which was straightforward, and Dave Bracey is currently on tour with Mika using a D5. Amy Winehouse’s crew were fine with the D5 as well, so it was the logical choice.” Dave Wooster, Leona’s engineer adds: “I had been using a DiGiCo D1 in rehearsals and I was able to give Brit Row the settings from that console, which they transferred straight onto the D5 for me to use. It all worked well and made things very simple.” Using the D5’s snapshots feature was key to the production, as the playback tracks for Minogue and Lewis comprised eight channels, plus main and spare mics; Winehouse performed with a stripped down backing band, using 32 channels, and Mika topped the channel count at 43. “Using snapshots is pretty much essential,” says Derrick. “Although, with the two stages, the changeover times are slightly easier than when the event had a single stage, it’s still high pressure because the production goes out live on television, bar for a 30 second delay. Using snapshots ensures that the system is set up perfectly for each artist’s performance - it removes the potential for human error.” At the monitor position, different artist requirements also meant that the use of the D5’s snapshots was key. Mika and his band were on a total of nine in-ear mixes, Minogue and Lewis were also on IEMs, but both featuring dancers using sidefills, while Winehouse and her band used 12 wedges and a pair of sidefills. Setting up the different monitor requirements and saving them as snapshots was as key to the smooth running of the performances as it was at FOH. “The D5 certainly made mixing monitors on the Glam stage straightforward,” says Derrick. The D5’s internal effects were used extensively although, given the range of acts and engineers, Derrick always provides certain key pieces of outboard, should the FOH engineers want to use them. “We provide a basic, high quality outboard rig - one tappable delay, one reverb and a valve compressor,” he says. “Mika also used some special outboard effects that they have on tour, and the engineers can choose to use the provided outboard or not, but most of the effects are internal - for instance Amy Winehouse didn’t use the outboard at all.” Meanwhile, all feeds (including VTs and the awards walk ups) were actively split at the stage using a rack of BSS Type II Active Splits, with a full multi-channel, optical feed going direct to the Floating Earth outside broadcast truck, where broadcast sound supervisor Toby Allington mixed the audio for television broadcast on a digital SSL console. With just one day to set up and two of rehearsals, followed by a full dress rehearsal on the afternoon of the show day, the pressure was on for Derrick and his team. But with their combined experience and the D5’s ease of programming and use, the audio production for the Glam stage was very straightforward. “The D5s were absolutely great,” says Derrick. “They worked faultlessly throughout and made the Glam stage production extremely straightforward. And the optical multi-channel feed to the OB truck meant that the audio quality for broadcast was just as high as it was in the venue.”
Press Contacts: Sarah James at Gasoline Media |
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