BHARAT ARMY FAN PARTY, ICC WORLD CUP, MANCHESTER

The ICC World Cup 2019 has seen a large number of pop up events alongside it and if anyone was going to have a huge fan party to celebrate, it was going to be the Bharat Army. As a build up to the brilliant India vs Pakistan match at Emirates Old Trafford, Bharat Army contracted their trusted agency partner in India to create a night to remember for the fans. The events team came to us with a good idea of the look and feel they wanted to achieve for their event. We took this into consideration and with our in-depth knowledge of the venue, suggested some tweaks and enhancements to the stage design to suit the space.

Lighting for the gig was spread across 4x overhead trusses and a floor package. An LED wall was suspended from the back truss, along with 4x 1m wide LED wall ‘strips’ from trusses rigged at 30 degrees off from the corners of the back truss. 24x Axcor Beam 300 were rigged between the LED wall hangs, along with 6x Atomic 3000 LED units and 6x 2-cell moles. Chauvet R2 washes were rigged on these trusses to give some backlight colour to the stage

A mid truss with a further 6x Clay Paky Axcor Beam 300, 4x Clay Paky Mythos 2, 6x Chauvet R2 Wash and 3x 2 cell moles along with 4x Clay Paky Mythos 2, 6x Chauvet R2 Wash and 4x 2 cell moles on the front truss completed the overhead lighting rig.

The floor package consisted of 16x Chauvet Legend 412z, 6x Sunstrip active units to highlight the artists when performing out on the thrust stage, and a further 4x Atomic 3000.

Whilst a great lighting rig has a big impact on atmosphere in the room, no big party is complete without some wow-factor effects. The team rigged 12x Sparkular fall units from the mid truss, 6x sparkular units on the downstage edge for upward firing sparks, 4x Magic FX confetti cannons and 4x CO2 Jets also positioned on the downstage edge. These were all controlled from the lighting console. Haze and smoke had a big role in setting off the lighting and effects package. These were provided by an MDG ATMe machine, 2x unique 2.1 and a Le Maitre G Force 300 fogger.

For the running and operating of this show, all our departments really had to work together to make the experience seamless. Show control was via an MA2 system consisting of an MA 2 Lite and an MA OnPC command and fader wing. Both lighting and video were controlled by the GrandMA system, which enabled the lighting operator to blackout the video walls at key points in the music and overlay colours onto the video whilst still allowing the video operator and VJ to have full control of the content. The MA was also used to send telnet commands to the E2 image processor to recall presets live during the event. The whole lighting and video network was built using Luminex Gigacore managed switches and DMX nodes.

With some big-name artists flying in from overseas for their performances, it couldn’t just look great, it needed to sound great too, so the PA really needed to pack a punch. The audio team rigged array processed V series main hangs, with Q series delays for the VIP balcony fill. The artist riders required a substantial monitor wedge & side fill package which we fulfilled with d&b products. The artist microphone & in ear monitoring requirements were comprised of Sennheiser’s latest digital microphone offering, the 6000 series and 2000 series IEMs. Control for FOH and Monitors side of stage was from Yamaha CL5s.

The audio, video and lighting teams worked closely together during the rig & operation of the show, to ensure a visually and audibly vibrant show for an energetic, lively crowd.