Stars including The Who, Yungblud, Paul Weller, Liam Gallagher and Ed Sheeran took to the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust, backed by Production AV’s cameras, screens, servers and crew.
Taking place over seven consecutive nights, the series of live music and comedy gigs were performed as fundraisers for the Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT), which provides care for people aged 13-24 with cancer. It was the second time Production AV supplied kit and crew for the events.
This year’s set up comprised Production AV’s Desay M6 LED panels as a central 8m x 4.5 screen flown above The Royal Albert Hall’s iconic stage and a large, curved 23.2m x 0.9m banner of LED screen across the back of the main stage, to help drive donations. This was supported with a camera package for the relay of real-life stories and live performances to the screen. Production AV’s Sony Studio camera channels and Agile ArcLite PTZ cameras were out in force, with footage mixed on the company’s Blackmagic ATEM 4k PPU. McCrea and his team used their Barco S3-4k for switching and disguise d3 2x4Pro servers for the content playout.
McCrea served as Project Manager and onsite Crew Chief, taking the helm with pre-production at Production AV’s HQ in Cheltenham, load-in at the Royal Albert Hall and on-site set up.
“The pre-production process started with conversations with Christie Lites’ Gordon Torrington, who served as Technical Manager on this project, in early 2022,” says McCrea. “We then moved onto liaising with the TCT media team and artists’ management to obtain assets, pre-programme content and ensure we had all the screen pixel maps created and resolutions sorted, and the system design clearly communicated.”
TCT’s Camera Director Phil Jennings oversaw the live vision mix for the 2022 shows, and the Production AV team worked closely with him to map out the best shots and content to be displayed on the Desay M6 LED panels around the room.
“Everything was ramped up this year, with a total of eight camera inputs used for most shows, as well as adding a Steadicam and operator, and Furio camera system, for The Who’s show on Friday to get the best footage possible,” McCrea continues. “All of the footage was also recorded for promotional use following the week of events.”
One of the standout performances was from Yungblud, who dazzled the audience with a Kabuki drop entrance. “We specified the 30,000 lumen Barco UDX to project pre-made content onto the drapes as Yungblud kicked off his set” says McCrea. “This was fed data from a pair of Hippotizer Amba media servers from our stock, which reliably ran that very important part of the show.”
Working alongside McCrea on the Production AV team was vision engineer Tim Perrett, Matt Sampson on the media servers and E2, Jane Petrie and Martin Tucker on cameras, Jamie Cowlin on the tracking pit camera and Gavin Roberts on the handheld camera, with a team of others assisting with mixing and recording.
“It was just fantastic to be a part of these amazing series of concerts that bring so many incredible artists together to generate funds for such a fantastic cause,” says McCrea. “We know it raises an amount of money that really has a positive impact on young people living with cancer, and their families. We often had to stop and catch ourselves as we broadcast people’s real-life stories into the room as it was very moving. Production AV is proud to support the Teenage Cancer Trust on this project and committed to bringing our experience and expertise to brilliant projects like this.”
The Production AV team was also proud to have delivered the project for the entire seven nights after some team members tested positive for COVID in the run up to the event, including Pete McCrea himself. “We have a really dedicated team, who stepped up to ensure we could maintain standards and realise world-class visuals and I couldn’t be prouder of us,” McCrea concludes.
The team is now looking ahead to the 2023 series of concerts, brainstorming ideas of how to elevate and develop the visual delivery.
Photo: © Production AV