HHA supplied System Sound with some 40 channels of radio over the whole weekend, the majority of which was used for the CBBC event. This included a 21-way Shure headset system for Umoja, the South African music and dance spectacular currently taking the West End by storm. HHA also supplied four channels of Shure Beta 58 hand held used by various artists, an 11-way in-ear monitoring system comprising Shure PSM 600s and 700s which was swapped between a number of different presenters and live acts over the weekend, plus a 4-way Sennheiser hand-held system for presenters and a 3-way ‘shout’ comms sytem for crew to communicate between the stage and FOH.
HHA's Nick Bruce Smith admitted that there was a lot of licensing involved in an event of this size. "We ended up using a lot of TV channels to fit it all in, as you can run up to fourteen systems on one TV channel," said Nick. "It took a fair amount of juggling to get it all in and make sure there were no conflicts, but we managed in the end."
System Sound's Simon Biddulph was pleased with the way the event ran, although he did remark that the CBBC Prom posed quite a challenge at times. "We had all these open mics on stage, and virtually the entire audience had whistles! We had no problem with feedback, but the PA did pick up the noise. From an audiophile's point of view it was a nightmare, but fortunately the audience didn't seem to care they just kept on whistling!"
However, the Blue Planet Prom was a totally different experience. "It was without doubt one of the best concerts I've ever seen and heard," stated Biddulph emphatically. "The music was wonderful, the images were stunning the whole thing was quite magical." The BAFTA Award-winning music to the underwater natural history series, the Blue Planet, was performed live by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, conducted by composer George Fenton and narrated by Sir David Attenborough and Alistair Fothergill, synching to the images and clips of the series relayed on two giant screens.
"George Fenton was using a PSM700 in-ear monitor system with a SoundWeb switcher so that he could choose what he wanted to hear, depending on where he was in the score. Sometimes it would be a partial click track for the intro, sometimes a continuous click. There were also various members of the orchestra PSM600 and PSM700 in-ear systems as well, just to keep everything together," explained Biddulph.
(Lee Baldock)
