Now in its fifth year, the Capital Radio Party in the Park had an impressive line up of acts from around the globe, including Westlife, Shakira, Enrique, Natalie Imbruglia and Will Young, and the Prince’s Trust show sold out 100,000 tickets in just over four hours, in the process raising a huge sum for the charity.
ClearChannel Events managed the event production with John Probyn overseeing the licensing and production, whilst Mark Ward was the production manager charged to ensure the 30-act show ran smoothly.
"This year’s production infrastructure included several new products or procedures introduced by suppliers to build on our experience as a team over previous years," said Probyn. "The relaxed nature of the backstage area reflects the efficiency of all of the suppliers on site."
Guided by the lighting design guru of Rock TV, Mark Cunniffe, this year’s Party in the Park featured the relatively unusual concept of combining two distinct shows. "Mark used the rigs for Rod Stewart and Diana Ross," said LSD’s Micky Curbishley. Light & Sound Design, as ever, supplied the entire system, Cunniffe operating the assembled Icons, MAC 2000s, 5kWs and PC Beams from an Icon console. In addition to the three diamond-shaped trusses which spanned the stage roof, the impressive stage also featured a backdrop made up of one large central screen and 20 smaller ‘pod’ screens, supplied by Screenco. Giles Conte, Screenco crew chief, elaborates: "What we have are fibre optics running the data to the pods from the processor housed in ‘Underworld’ (Screenco’s video control position located below stage), up one of the stage legs into the roof truss and back down to each pod. A fibre optic cable link goes from the top of the upstage pod, up the cable management system attached to the chain of one of the hoists, into the truss and back down another cable management system, to the bottom of the downstage pod (10 times), which has been quite a challenge, because the fibres tended to break, so we got through a fair amount of cables."
Star Rigging’s Phil Broad managed the rigging elements, employing two new Ibex Plus motor controllers - the first time this system has been used on a show.
The Ibex Plus system works by linking the computer controller to encoders and the motors, although it also has the flexibility to allow the motors to be programmed without decoders, using the lifting speed of the hoists to calculate the distance travelled. The system moved 20 screens using 40 hoists, and one large centre screen for both shows.
"The new Ibex Plus enabled us to move all of the motors in sync very accurately," Phil explained. "It allowed us to undertake more complex moves with a higher degree of safety. We have noticed a trend with show designers asking for stage moves more and more frequently, which is why Star Rigging has invested in this new system."Star Rigging also custom-made aspects of the rigging to allow Blue to fly down from the ceiling, Enrique to introduce a Mardi Gras effect and Westlife to appear on an additional structure to the left of the stage.
The 25mm LED modules screens which created the stunning stage backdrop carried a combination of live images from the cameras and pre-programmed images which were either film or graphics, creating a dynamic light-source at the back of the stage. Chris Saunders from Black Pig explained: "We made a video backdrop for each artist, bespoke for each track. That meant 81 different graphics, plus a bespoke opening sequence and lots of little stings and ads." Black Pig also took care of the audio playback (where artists were performing live vocal to track or full mime) - sending a stereo output to the live PA.
Saunders said: "A lot of the videos we generate are beta-specific - we lay the audio back on and sync it up. For t
