It was the first year that the new events team from Liverpool Culture Company organized this event. "It was the 25th anniversary, 2005 is the 'Year of the Sea' and we wanted to refresh and revamp the event, make it more contemporary and broaden its appeal to a wider public than the traditional River Festival audience. We also wanted to increase the physical area" says Lee Forde, general manager of events for Liverpool Culture Company.
The result was that the Festival - staged in and around Liverpool's famous Waterfront - attracted more people, interest and interactive participation than ever before. All elements were free to the public.
The 12 x 13m Alpha stage was supplied by Essex-based SRC and the performance programme included country music, an international shanty festival concluding with Ned Skelly and his Swing Orchestra on the Sunday.
For the first time, the Pier Head site featured a huge 'bouncy' attraction area and continental market stalls, supplied by Geraed Markets, new water based activities were also introduced. in Salthouse Docks plus also new was a myriad of street performers.
To deal with nearly 40 different acts over the three days, Liverpool Culture Company brought Manchester based sound and lighting rental company Audile onboard to supply sound and lighting for the Pier Head stage. The system comprised 12 stacks of Funktion One Resolution 5 PA, driven by XTA processors and powered by QSC amps. The monitor system featured Turbosound TFM450 wedges onstage and a Soundcraft MH4 console, and Audile also supplied a heterogeneity of over 60 microphones including Sennheiser radios, Shure, Beyer, AKG and Audio Technica's, all looked after by Melvyn Coote. Front of house sound engineer Ben Emissah mixed using a Soundcraft MH3 console.
Despite many performers taking the stage in daylight, the decision was taken to provide a full moving light rig onstage - which greatly enhanced the overall presentation and look, coupled with a white upstage cyc. "The idea was to up the ante on all production elements" explains Forde. Lighting was designed by Audile's Rob Leach and included High End Studio Beam PCs and Martin Mac 500 profile moving lights, plus an assortment of PARs, ARRI 2K fresnels, Source Four 15 - 30 profiles for key lighting, plus smoke and hazers. The rig was controlled with an Avolites Azure 2000 console.
Audile also architecturally lit a selection of boats in Canning Dock, using Studio Due 2.5K City Colors, Mini City's and 400W HQI fixtures with blue lamps, all of which were run off an Avo Pearl in a dockside Portacabin.
Large format projection was supplied by local company Blueway, run by John Hodgson using two Pani PB6 6kW machines with AMD-32 slide changers to beam giant images onto the George's Dock Building (actually the art deco exhaust flume of the Mersey Tunnel) and onto the Canning Dock side of the Maritime Museum.
The George's Dock projector was located in a former car showroom across the road, pointing upwards with the artwork heavily keystone corrected. The Maritime museum projector was originally sent up in a dockside Portacabin but Hodgson had to think laterally when Irish Navy Patrol Boat the 'Ciara' - one of the many nautical attractions - moored up directly in front of it for the duration, completely blocking the projection path! After some swift and diplomatic negotiation, the solution was to move the projector
