Castaway Festival, which was to be held on March 21st but was cancelled due to the global coronavirus pandemic, was rescheduled to early December at the same venue – Whitfords Nodes Park in Perth’s northern suburbs.
What So Not, Golden Features, Slumberjack, Motez, Tina Says and GNRLEY all performed at what can only be
described as an unusual festival set up.
Concert promoters Zaccaria Concerts & Touring delivered a one-of-a-kind solution to holding a festival in these strange times. Stages were positioned away from the licensed area so that there was not a mosh pit or dance floor in front of the stage as per WA Health Department rules. There were two scaffold towers and ground support with an 8m high stage and a 10.5m high stage plus a large boat moored by the site and a park rotunda lookout.
“The concept was the idea of John Zaccaria who was trying to get in line with health department rulings which came out about three weeks before the event,” explained Barry Brody, Production Manager. “Before this, we were a one stage multi-act festival!”
It was a massive challenge to get off the ground with such a short lead time for approvals, additional production costs, labour and of course, getting production up nearly 11 metres from the ground.
“Basically everything was tripled,” said Barry. “We needed more of everything; PA, lights, screens, power, machinery, and labour.”
Statewide Staging System built the two stages; the Northern Stage in the car park had deck height of 10.5m, roof trim to ground 17m and a scaff weight of 18t + 20t ballast. The Western Stage on the beach had a deck height of 8.5m, roof trim to ground 15m and a scaff weight of 16t + 20t Ballast.
Statewide also manufactured four sets of custom stairs which they started making in their fabrication warehouse three days before bump in! Added to that were three LED screen support structures and four truss PA towers.
“We had a four-day bump in with a two-day bump out and everything was made interesting by windy conditions,” commented Scott Bakewell, Senior Project Manager at Statewide. “Some days the wind hit 50km – 60km which makes it interesting trying to put stage decks on while at 10m high.”
Audio Technik provided the audio system for Castaway, Senior System Tech Andy Walters was given the mammoth task of interconnecting all the audio systems together.
Three separate PAs were deployed around the site consisting of a Northern d&b system of 24 x J, 6 x Infra, 12 x J-Sub in the mains and 16 x V delays, a Western L-Acoustics System of 20 x K2, 16 x SB28, and a Southern L-Acoustics system of 20 x K2, 16 x SB218.
Two FOH positions were deployed for the Northern and Western stage, with Andy Walters at the Northern end and John Kerns on the Western end whilst also looking after the Southern end. As far as a normal audio system deployment goes that’s where it ended.
Cable runs had to go over the dunes and then up 8m – 11m off the ground plus distribution needed to be carefully thought out. Connecting the site together consisted of 1.6km of core including Fibre optics, AES and analog tie lines, with Waves LV1 (thanks to Danny Olesh!) controlling the whole system. Due to COVID-19 safety plans, the LV1 system also worked as an Evac and comms system with communication channels at seven different points within the park and remote access to the system at any point within the park.
Because the system was designed to have all systems running at the same time, the ability to control zones within the park to help with crowd dispersion was essential. Throughout the night however, the PA only needed to be adjusted once as the crowd got a little condensed in one area, backing the system off in that area helped disperse the crowd without killing the vibe in the park.
Showscreens provided everything visual with Ryan Varley commenting that with a site so spread out, his crew had to split up into separate teams and run load-ins in different areas simultaneously … over several days.
Despite the challenges, they were able to install everything as planned and happy to be working on another large scale show like this.
Kale Tatum operated the lighting rig whilst Bryce Varley and Brad Hodgkiss took care of the LED screens.
The Northern and Western main stages featured a combination of lighting fixtures from the heavy hitters of the industry including Robe, GLP and Claypaky as well as having an LED screen on the rear of each.
There was also three delay LED screens which had Robe Pointes and SGM P5 floods mounted above each to create multiple focal points. The delay screens were setup running in the opposite direction of the stages so that the crowd wouldn’t focus around a single area.
Ryan remarked that the main logistical issue was DMX data and video signal distribution.
“For lighting, we were able to use our WDMX wireless kit with directional antennas for each delay setup and traditional wired cores running to the stages,” he said. “Things were not so simple when it came to distributing signal to all of the screens and transmitting from two offsite stages, one of which was on board a 100-foot boat in the ocean!”
To send the audio and video from the Boat Stage a TVU One Cellular Bonding Transmitter was used with the receiver being located in Showscreen’s HD OB Van backstage at the rear of the Northern Stage. The TVU was also used to conduct interviews throughout the whole site during set breaks.
Signal was distributed through a mixture of wireless links and Fibre Optic cable from the OB Van using a Ross Carbonite Ultra Vision Switcher and Ross Open Gear Frame.
“Our outside broadcast crew were there to film the performers so the crowd could get that front of stage feel no matter where they were,” said Ryan.
A combination of Sony BRC PTZ cameras and Marshall POV Cameras were setup on the Northern and Western Stage plus two cameramen using Sony PDWF800 cameras and TVUOne Transmitter’s to float between stages and crowd during the show.
“All the hard work and planning paid off and the event went off without a problem,” said Ryan. “We were able to deliver the crowd that large scale festival experience in a new and unique way.”
There was as a massive Silent Disco and carnival-style rides were among the attractions keeping patrons engaged and apart across the venue eliminating the formation of mosh pits and facilitating social distancing.
Castaway proves that festivals can still work while being Covid-19 safe.
“The feedback has been positive,” concluded Barry. “The punters gathered around the venue in smaller clusters rather than one big mosh pit and there was a great vibe. Both the Health Department and the Police were happy – a very positive Covid safe result.
“Would we do it this way again? Well, you’d need to increase capacity to justify costs as production basically tripled!”
Staging: Statewide Staging www.statewidestaging.com.au
Audio: Audio Technik www.audiotechnik.com.au
LED Screens, Lighting & Broadcast: Showscreens www.showscreens.tv
Power: Black and White
Labour: Cyclus EPA and 360 Logistics
