When Norwest Productions in Brisbane were contacted by Factory Festival team back in August 2020, one of the darkest times our industry had ever seen, to provide pricing for an extended duration music festival, they were needless to say instantly excited to be involved.
“While our footprint and market reach has seen us a lot luckier than some, realistically, like every other production provider in the world, our business was in need of work and as importantly, something to give us all some positivity amid the doom and gloom of COVID life,” remarked Ray Moss, General Manager.
As discussions and time progressed, it became obvious that restrictions meant smaller crowds and less revenue through the gate meaning if the festival was to get legs, it needed a production partner that could deliver to their highest level of production standards and do so as a full-service provider. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to go on to become a wonderful example of suppliers and event teams all working together with the one goal of getting the show open. Bearing in mind, the ‘show’ was a three-week-long festival with the intention of opening its doors as many of those days as it could get both artists and health approval.
So all the usual, and some pretty unusual, discussion and information transactions began, dates, specs, designs, venue plans, quotes etc,” said Ray. “Given the scale of the event and amount of hoops that needed to be jumped through, it all took quite a bit of time and correspondence before we were put on standby for an outdoor event for around 10,000 pax socially distanced at the Brisbane Showgrounds, with about a month’s notice (nothing too out of the norm there).
Over the space of the next couple of weeks, through the changing of various border closures and restriction twisting and turning, the Factory team came to the very difficult decision to postpone the event, while this was kept on the down-low for 24 hours or so, their announcement was a half-hour off going live when the QLD Premier announced an easing of restrictions and all importantly, the opening of the borders. All of sudden there was again a glimmer of hope which was all that was needed to give it a red-hot crack, and game on.
While it was clear they couldn’t viably stage the event they had initially envisaged, I have never in my time seen an event team pivot so quickly to re-design, re-engage, and roll out a still large-scale festival,” added Ray. “The team at Factory along with the awesome site and production people from Sideshift worked around the clock, scrambling their key staff into 14 days isolation in Brisbane, and working with all suppliers, venue, artists and stakeholders to rebuild from the ground up. If our industry is going to emerge from the COVID ashes, it’s this kind of dedication and passion that is needed and the Factory Team were absolutely dedicated to the cause.”
In conjunction with Sideshift & Gig Control, the NW team helped to re-scale the production and assist with designing a site that essentially operated as a multistage layout, but also needed to be fully integrated to allow for the organizers to use every inch of space and production infrastructure across the site for the headliners to ensure the maximum number of festival-goers could feel like they were part of the main event. In other words, multiple delay speakers that were used as completely separate chill-out zones with their own artists and content needed to be able to be re-purposed as required during each show to allow additional capacity to assist with crowd movement and restrictions. Clearly, this was going to throw up some programming and delay time issues that needed to be worked through carefully to ensure the ability to transition in and out of each mode at the request of the promoters.
Audio for the main stage was handled easily deploying 16 x L-Acoustics K2 with KS28 Subs running in cardioid, plus ARCS & ARCS-FOCUS front/out-fills. Avid Profiles each end were used as house consoles with a DiGiCo SD8 and Avid SC48 filling most of the additional requirements with the exception of an Avid S6L and Digico SD10 provided by JPJ as part of some artist specific packages. The monitor system again was completely L-Acoustics with 12XT wedges, ARCS Side-fill and ARCS-WIFO/SB18 DJ fills. Eight channels of Sennheiser 2000 Series IEMS were also deployed as a house ear package.
As most of the original headliners remained in play, the original LX Design by Tim Beeston pretty much stayed the same although tweaked slightly for the smaller stage with some reduction to audience lighting,” said Ray. “Some fixture substitution was necessary from the original plot to enable us to provide from our Martin and Claypaky stock with the ‘house rig’ landing as 21 x MAC Quantum Wash, 14 x MAC Viper, 15 x Claypaky Sharpy, 9 x GLP JDC-1, 15 x 4-liters, with an MA Lighting grandMA full size taking care of control with an MA light for backup. Lots of smoke was requested so four Robe Hazers and four JEM ZR Foggers took care of the atmosphere.
Floor packages were taken care of by MPH who parked a bunch of fixtures and truss on site for the duration which they re-configured as required to suit the requirements of each act. The staging was supplied by Stageset.”
More Sharpys, Duets and Claypaky Stormy CC were added to the wings for audience light with MAC Quantum Spots, and a few dozen ShowPRO LED Fusion Pars added to the room to create more dance zones across the multiple barriers to again assist with keeping the crowd as distanced as possible.
Onstage screen duty was taken care of by NW’s tried and true Leyard NV8 outdoor LED panel. The 9m x 4.3m screen operated perfectly for the entire period without a single murmur of ‘must be sub-6mm’ heard.
With the main venue well in hand, NW turned to the site lighting and integrated audio system which was based around a series of scaffold towers distributed around the site, with the ability make any or all of the site audio and lighting become part of the mainstage system, or operate stand-alone.
L-Acoustics DVdosc with SB218’s took care of the four delay towers with an ARCS-WIFO system on the second DJ Stage. A distributed system of small Quest boxes on poles was also deployed across the sideshow area. Each tower was fitted out with a combination of Claypaky Sharpys in NW’s custom DMX rain domes and ShowPRO HEX36 outdoor fixtures as the basis of site lighting. More HEX36 and Fusion Pars were distributed throughout the site and bars etc. Custom Gobos were fitted in a fleet of Quantum Profiles in rain hoods to help with the branding of which Factory is extremely proud to display. An additional grandMA light was appointed to the site lighting with the biggest hurdle being to keep the Sharpys from hitting any of the extremely close residential hi-rise buildings that surround the showgrounds.
Chameleon was on hand to provide the Firefly LED Festoon. Delay towers and ballast came from C&M Staging.
While the organizers arm-wrestled with the red tape of opening under a COVID Checklist or the increased capacity an approved COVID Safe plan offered, the NW team got on with yet again delivering seamless and world-class production to the accolades of the entire event team, visiting artists, and paying public who all enjoyed dipping their toes back into the festival world and at least some hope there is a future we can all work in.
NW Crew:
Project Manager: Ray Moss
Audio: Ian Shapcott, Luke Symons, Josh Finlayson, Jake Elmer, Leon Darcey
Lighting: Luke Van Roy, Kishan Maisuria
LED: Dean Maxwell
