The event which attracted more than 60,000 people, included some of the injured service personnel who benefit from the money raised by the charity. It was broadcast live by the BBC, which took its music audio feed from the Red-TX sound truck.
Help for Heroes has united the nation behind the Armed Forces. The charity, which does not question the rights and wrongs of recent wars, aims to provide the best possible care and support for injured UK servicemen and women.
Artists performing included Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, Tom Jones, James Blunt, Alexandra Burke, Pixie Lott, Plan B and The Saturdays.
Red-TX was commissioned to handle the audio by Chris Bretnall, head of Creative Broadcast Solutions who was engaged as technical director by BBC Events.
"It was a fantastic concert and the delivery by everyone at Red-TX was faultless," Bretnall says. "This was a massive undertaking, at relatively short notice, over a period when both people and resources were already heavily committed. Plans for the broadcast of the event, and the ancillary processes that were needed for the live TX, were still maturing on the morning of the gig itself. Despite that, the Red-TX crew kept all the tracks in place and delivered very high quality sound."
Live sound engineer and Red-TX director Tim Summerhayes manned the desk on board Red-TX's main music truck, while co-director Conrad Fletcher was on board a BBC Outside Broadcast vehicle handling the audio input from all the VT's, the comedians and the live presenters on stage, and the music mix from Summerhayes. In total, five hours of concert sound was recorded. The first four and a half hours were edited down to one and a half hours of television, which began broadcasting at 8pm. At 9.30 pm the broadcast went live for the final half hour of programming, during which Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow were on stage.
Red-TX director Ian Dyckhoff says: "It was a complicated event, mainly because we were feeding chunks of audio to the edit suite where it was being cut with footage of some of the war veterans who are benefitting from the money raised by Help For Heroes. However, we had a great team of people around us and lots of help from other contractors, including Britannia Row who took charge of the main PA. We were thrilled to be involved with this event and to lend our support to such a worthy cause. It was a very moving experience."
Chris Bretnall adds: "The concert was visually stunning and was perfectly complimented by Tim's wonderful music mixes and Conrad's fantastic TV balance. For me, Red-TX are about the best live sound specialists in the business when it comes to delivering music events.
As well as broadcasting the concert on BBC One, the organisers also ensured that the Help For Heroes event was shown at military bases around the world on British Forces Broadcasting (BFBS).
(Jim Evans)
