On the July 3rd, a crowd of more than 6,000 packed Auckland’s Spark Arena for supergroup L.A.B – the first arena music show worldwide for many weeks.
Fans didn’t have to worry about social-distancing as the country has not had community transmission of the virus for months allowing New Zealand to move to alert level 1.
The show was produced by Loop with Oceania Productions supplying lighting and rigging, College Hill Productions supply audio and Big Picture the cameras and screens.
It was the first time that lighting designer Jack Hooper of Hooper Lighting had worked with the band.
“We had just gone through the design process for a run of shows in Australia that are happening in November (bring on the trans-Tasman bubble) and at the start of June I got a call that we are doing an arena show as soon as we can and I need to get drawing quickly!” explained Jack.
Jack’s brief was very open with just four main requests: can it have a techno vibe, don’t even think about making it look like a reggae festival, work on a colour pallet with the content creators …. followed up with just make it awesome bro!
For the techno vibe Jack decided to go with four truss towers each loaded with six beam fixtures, three LED strobes, three blinders plus LED bars going vertically up with them so that he could frame the LED screens and have heaps of punch when needed.
“The main goal I had for the design was a rig that has an almost dance party vibe to it but fixtures in the right place to still light the band,” he said. “I used Robe BMFL Spots which are an amazingly versatile fixture that can light the artists when needed and then the next song be used for more aerial breakups and effects.”
Jack’s biggest challenge was coming up with a lighting rig that could complement the LED screens at the Auckland show whilst holding its own without any screens in Hamilton where they also played another sold-out show.
“Also for a majority of the pre-production, I could not have physical meetings which made for fun Zoom calls sharing my screen of what I had programmed in Capture and the content team sharing their d3 screen,” added Jack.
The lighting rig comprised of 22 x Robe BMFL Spots, 8 x Robe BMFL Blades, 44 x Robe Pointes, 22 x GLP impression X4L, 24 x ShowPRO Fusion Bar QXV IP, 12 x 4-way blinders, 8 x 2-way blinders and 20 x strobes.
“It all worked really well and I have to say, I loved the intro!” Jack said. “The suspense of the first blackout followed with Joel up on his riser silhouetted for a minute-long guitar solo that just holds the room. The other really cool look is in the song Controller where I have a big flyout going which makes the crowd glow and you could actually appreciate how lucky we are to be doing events again.”
Lighting control was a MA Lighting grandMA2 full size with Jack describing the MA2 as the perfect tool for this type of show. There was no timecode as he needed to be able to adapt and jump around quickly as the band changes the setlist order depending on how the crowd are reacting.
The FOH mix was taken care of by Richie Allan who has known and worked with most of the band for a long time now, for the last two years as FOH Engineer. Richie prefers to use a Midas Pro 2 console.
“The last time I was a full-time live sound engineer, everything was 98% analogue, and digital was just starting to become a thing, at least here in NZ,” he commented. “When I made a return and begun working with L.A.B, the Pro 2 was what I had used most and was most comfortable on at that time, and I was also a big fan of the Midas Heritage H3000 and XL4 consoles.
“The band like the live sound to capture the sound of the albums, but bigger. We used an L-Acoustics K2 system provided by College Hill Productions, one of NZ’s top audio production companies who we like to work with quite closely.”
With the microphone choice, Richie said this is something that they will look at more in-depth from now, but at present, it’s a mixture of Shure, Audix and Sennheiser, all depending on what is available at each show and in each city.
The band uses a mixture of IEMs and wedges, with some members relying purely on the IEM, and others using a mixture of both. Charlie Rodgers mixed monitors also on a Midas Pro 2.
“I had to work at keeping the low end tight as it was a tricky room for low end, but overall I think it turned out OK!,” concluded Richie. “Everyone was really happy with the final result, and it was a great show for everyone on stage and out front.”
Mikee Tucker, Director of Loop, said that in addition to breathing air back into the lungs of the live entertainment industry it was awesome to see 6000 happy, smiling faces!
“College Hill, Oceania and Big Picture (NEP Live Events) came together like Voltron to produce a world-class arena show, he added. “The sound was the best we have heard in Spark Arena, clear, crisp and controlled. The visuals and lighting combined to produce one of the best spectacles to hit the arena in recent years.”
Producer/Production: Loop
Lighting and Rigging: Oceania Productions
Audio: College Hill Productions
FOH Sound: Richie Allan
Monitors: Charlie Rodgers
Staging/Risers: Show, Light and Power
Screens & Camera: Big Picture
Lighting Design: Hooper Lighting
Stage and Set Design: Loop, Pleasurekraft, Hooper Lighting, Big Picture.
Photos: Mark Russell, Doug Peters
