The Tamworth
Country Music Festival		 HOME
 
or.."Three Rodeo Girls Go Round The Outside"
some technical stuff <<back
Doing lights for television is far removed from just lighting a rockband. For the cameras, which incidentally have priority over the 'live audience' per se, there has to be far more front lighting than you would normally use, in addition to the constant presence of rear lighting - but not too much. Over the top of all that, 'colour correction' must be used and set at a particular level, decided by the director sitting in an outside-broadcast (OB) truck at the back of the building.
CB designed the show - as always - so pretty much no matter what 'look' I built it all looked great. Considering that some of the artists appearing in the "Telstra Road To Tamworth" Competition were rehearsing while Dale and I were still diagnosing problems and getting all the moving lights, moving, as such, I did okay behind the desk during the shows.
This competition had it's 30th Anniversary this year, so it was bigger'n'better. The showcaller, Jeff Lewis, said I give great television. That competition is where the likes of Troy Casser-Daly, Lee Kernighan, Keith Urban, Beccy Cole, Adam Harvey and heaps of others, made their start. 'Twas a big show for me.
These pictures were all taken on my Nokia 6120 Classic Mobile Phone
No offers of apology. Click an image to enlarge.
A shot of the Country Music Theatre stage. 5 trusses, 20 Moving Lights, 72 Dimmers, 100 Conventional Lights, 15 chain motors, 3 chain blocks, 2 lighting consoles, a computer and a 400amp power source.
The ColourWeb. This ingenious device is a 'cargo net' with strong LEDs sewn to it. A PC is connected to it and using software called 'Arkaos', you can display just about any image or animation and assign a key on the keyboard to it. The whole shebang costs about $150,000.
Ahh.. Dimmer City. Initilly, this area was setup beautifully.. Until CB wanted it moved half a metre closer to the stage. Sigh. It's almost impossible to move that lump of cables and connections and move them without literally destroying any semblance of neatness.
Audio? That's something you stand on to focus isnt it? Apparently, no more. The Noise Boyz have taken to flying their speaker boxes in what they call a 'line array'. Computers decide where the boxes go and what angle and so on, taking all the guess work out of audio. Lazy bastards. No soul.
A wide shot of the stage including PA arrays and Video Screens. In the foreground can be seen the illustrious Dave "Thats a Slab" Henderson. As usual, the lighting station is more impressive and larger than Audio and Vision.
"The Telstra Road To Tamworth" Light Panels. Basically 2.4m x 1.2m boxes with flourescent tubes in them. There are 10 of them and they collectively weigh around 300kg. We had to take the ColourWeb down to do this. Pain in the arse too.
Another wide shot from the bleaches, this time with some of the lights on. Given that the 'high-bay' sodium lights in the venue's ceiling were on, and there was no smoke hazers on, its not a bad looking rig. Even before you turn the lights on.

Why I get the big money :) Two lighting consoles, Three monitors (1 for the Hog - pictured here-, 1 for the 'live' television feed), ColourWeb PC (the 3rd monitor), 1 followspot (the headset's hanging on one of the monitors) and Colin Baldwin jabbing me in the arm repeatedly.

Monitor Beach. This is the sound that the musicians hear, often called Foldback. It takes a large amount of experience and patience to be a good monitor engineer. Of all the sound guys that I've known, I've only met two who have the required qualities above.
OB Van Takeover. These are just two of the 5 trucks involved. The 'Big Blue Truck' wasnt allowed to be photographed, I was told. Shrug. The Blue Truck was a semi fitted out exactly like a television studio. the amount of cabling that these guys use is enormous.
Another shot of FOH area. The only thing you cant see here is the complete rat's nest of cables underneath the Vision station (in the middle). If I did that as a system tech, I would not only be anally invaded with a large rough object, I'd be taken out the back and shot by firing squad.. then sacked.
The omnipresent Jeff Lewis. Jeff's job was to co-ordinate the artists to and from the stage, via his Stage Manager, 'Normal' Norville (dont ask). also he was talking to the TV director and the Vision Operator, who sat beside him. The devices with the rows of blue lights are intercom stations.