Held at Perth’s Optus Stadium, the AFL Grand Final brought out the local talent for a well-received pre-game show.
The likes of Abbe May, Baker Boy, John Butler, Stella Donnelly, Vikki Thorn, Donna Simpson, Gina Williams, Guy Ghouse, Eskimo Joe, and Colin Hay all commanded the stage, performing a series of Aussie cover songs. Birds of Tokyo secured the coveted halftime spot.
As in previous years, James ‘Oysters’ Kilpatrick was audio director for the entertainment working for Frontier under Travis Hogan and Simon Junior Johnson, with Perth’s Audio Technik supplying the gear.
“I had to leave at very short notice, there was an ‘are you OK to go to Perth if the game shifts’ call, then I was on a flight the next week,” commented Oysters. “I needed proof of vaccination, two Covid tests pre-boarding in the two days before the flight – one I got first, then at an employer approved site the day before.”
A further test was done at Perth airport after landing and one after twelve days quarantine and finally Oysters was released after a negative result fourteen days after arrival.
“There was no hub but I kept to working crew only for safety’s sake after quarantine,” he added. “There are also the Covid microphone and IEM policies to follow – JPJ’s are a good industry standard and best practice.”
Other than Covid restrictions, Oysters biggest challenge was the time frame who said it was an evolving set of circumstances seeing as the parts of the show had obviously changed due to the circumstance.
“I made a Pro Tools mock-up of the show timeline (in real-time off the producers cue list) in quarantine and used Source Connect’s MTC to LTC timecode converter to sync video, QLab replay and Pro Tools together. It took nearly a week to work out how to get the Colin Hay video to sync with the live performance.”
During the event, some elements were completely live whilst others were off QLab with live elements. Oysters edited on a Pro Tools machine and sent the stems to Andy Walters who operated the QLab and audio networks to collate. The QLab ran stems, guides, three sets of LTC for lights and video and two clicks.
As to Optus Stadium, Oysters says that like all new venues it is fantastic to work in but was not quite high enough for a semitrailer to fit in, but it has great access with several accessible vomitories so gear gets on and off fast.
“I didn’t spend a lot of time outside the truck, but did walk and listen a few times and found that the viewing is good and you are always close to a house speaker so audio coverage is great,” he said.
This year’s show had lots of parts that move out quickly and as Oysters tries to use wired mics and ear packs because of the sheer amount of RF on game day, it’s all lots of 6 and 12-way multis with headers. An AFL ground dwarfs most other sporting fields so there are some large cable runs involved.
The performance utilised the Stadium’s house PA with the local truck, control, monitors and crew from Audio Technik in Perth. 164 IEM and transmitters, redundant playback and MADI infrastructure came from JPJ Audio.
Various network trickery, Waves server, Pro Tools rig and LV1 came from Andy Walters whilst Oysters supplied a Final Cut Pro and another Pro Tools rig.
Audio Technik’s John JK Kerns was used to oversee the inputs into the house rig and monitor volume and tone/EQ.
Oysters was ensconced in an empty broadcast truck fitted out with an AVID S6L as the main console with redundant Waves Extreme servers as well as JBL LSR monitors. There were two high spec Mac Minis with fast SSD drives on a MADI switch with QLab for replay and another for AVB Pro Tools record and show edits. A high spec MacBook Pro was used for Pro Tools recording of voice-overs and additional parts for the performance onsite with another running Final Cut Pro to keep copies of the show mockup and videos with relevant timecodes so they could process and make changes as the master show file changed.
There was an additional Waves set up so they could monitor broadcast outputs and run phase and mono meters on a separate screen.
“Andy Walters had most of the above networked so file transfers between machines was a breeze without the various bits of equipment interfering with each other,” added Oysters. “There was also a Source Connect link running from my broadcast outputs on the Pro Tools record via a Chrome browser going back to Chong Lim in his studio in Melbourne, he was able to listen in real-time while we were receiving show edits and running new mixes or rehearsing off Pro Tools. This was very handy and saved a ton of time as it worked in real-time.
“As always, on-ground time with talent was scarce for a lot of reasons … record everything then rehearse as much as possible leading up to the pre-game. The pre-game moves so fast, I try to get it into a state where it’s a case of just turn it on and run cues with most of the work done beforehand. Whilst the mix does go to the PA it also goes to broadcast and radio – you have to separate the three and treat them slightly differently.”
Microphones were mainly wired Shure 58s with pop filters to cut down on failure points such as no phantom power, minimal RF.
Lewis Paton-Ryan mixed monitors on a DiGiCo SD10 that was set up to be mobile on a riser with his cue mix and shout speaker so he could wheel out to the field for rehearsals.
Due to the sheer volume of performers on the field, the IEMs were a mixture of Audio Technik’s Shure PSM1000s and a large package of Sennheiser G3s sent in from JPJ Audio. 164 packs on 23 sends were used overall, wrangled and coordinated by Scott Jennings.
Oysters has been mixing the AFL Grand Final since 2012 saying it’s not a job for the faint-hearted, but as you do more of them you learn to anticipate and plan what may go wrong will go well.
“Surrounding yourself with a great and talented crew who take the show on is the way to go,” he commented. “The first few years I felt like an observer in some ways and was probably lucky to survive considering some of the challenges involved. You have to become a firm audio director and take charge – thanks to the mentorship and faith of Micheal Gudinski, Travis Hogan and Nick Pitts from Frontier – it’s the only way it works and you need people you trust around you to do the same.
“I wore my Gudinski “don’t fuck up” wristband for the whole month … hope we did him proud.”
Team Leader/System Tech: Andy Walters
2IC: Clancy Travers
Monitor Engineer: Lewis Paton-Ryan
Stadium System Tech: John Kerns
RF Coordinator: Scott Jennings
RF Wrangler: Jacob Gray
Comms Mixer: Rob Knowles
Patch Tech: Charles Logan
Stage Hand/Roof guy: Ben Tarbard
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