MLA tames complexity of War of The Worlds
- Details
The production is constructed around a three-tonne 35ft tall Martian Fighting Machine, which fires real flames against the backdrop of a 100ft-wide animation wall - and there are many other special effects.
From a musical perspective, the 36-piece ULLAdubULLA strings performed alongside the nine-piece Black Smoke Band (which included many musicians from the original tour in 2006). Now on its seventh tour of duty, the production has been played out on its last three outings through Martin Audio’s MLA PA - and sounded as fresh as ever.
As for the cast, Liam Neeson retained his role (in 3D holography) as The Journalist, and was joined for this tour by Jason Donovan, reprising the role of Parson Nathaniel, alongside Carrie Hope Fletcher as Beth, his wife. Adam Garcia debuted as The Artilleryman, Newton Faulkner performed The Sung Thoughts of The Journalist, Inglorious front man Nathan James played The Voice of Humanity, with Anna-Marie Wayne back as Carrie, The Journalist’s Fiancée.
In terms of production, the inordinate amount of inventory provided by sound, lighting, video, pyro and stage/motion control suppliers will have presented a logistical nightmare for production manager Steve Nolan and his team. Fortunately, sound rental company RG Jones have wide experience of this production, and FOH engineer Simon Honywill was on his fifth tour of duty, having first piloted the mix back in 2009.
Having again selected MLA as his PA of choice, Simon Honywill was eager to extoll its virtues. “I wouldn't do this show with any other PA,” he stated. “In fact, I couldn’t do the show. One of the crucial elements is the narration and if the intelligibility is compromised people complain, as it’s an iconic part of the production. On top of that MLA just sounds awesome.”
Some arenas seem determined to challenge this, often arced with glazed VIP boxes at the horseshoe end. Simon Honywill acknowledges that this will generate unwanted reflections. “With music you can often get away with it but it would destroy the intelligibility of the narration [with a conventional PA]. Fortunately, we can mitigate it by using the ‘Hard Avoid’ setting [in the Martin Audio Display software].
In Nottingham Arena, for instance, it made a massive difference, and enabled us to focus the acoustic energy very effectively and reduce unwanted reflections for a large portion of the audience. It’s an absolutely invaluable technology.” Liverpool Echo was another venue where system engineer Steve Carr, assisted by Matt Sussex, needed to ‘Hard Avoid’ the concrete wall which runs around the arena between the lower and upper seating tiers.
The design of the Martin Audio system had been slightly modified from the 2014 production - minor changes to the front fills, a bit more ordnance in the PA dept, and the fact that the hangs were pushed further upstage to preserve sightlines meant that bespoke measurements had to be undertaken to ensure accuracy of the optimisation.
At the 20,000-plus capacity venues production fielded 20 MLA elements per side, with 16 MLA Compact providing out-fills. To compensate for the slightly odd position of the main hangs, eight MLA Mini elements on each stage wing were focused at the front to keep the energy level off the stage, driven by Martin Audio multi-channel iKON amplifiers, which provided an elegant solution. Martin Audio DD12s covered the extremities of stage left and right front rows to maintain coverage consistency, while under the stage and at the base of the thrust were 16 MLX subs in a spaced arc array.
Towards the rear of the auditorium, there were two surround positions, each comprising eight W8LM Mini line arrays each side.
Simon Honywill was piloting his mix on a DiGiCo SD7 with Fader Expansion. With three fully loaded 56-input racks his input count is 168 channels. As well as the band and 36 piece string section, themselves occupying the majority of two SD racks, the high input count was made up from surround FX, playback and the six guest artists, each wearing a main and spare RF pack. The playback machines also generated time-code, which played a crucial part in enabling both Simon Honywill and monitor engineer Becky Pell to mix the complex soundscape, while Nathan Kennedy supervised RF and radio mics.
(Jim Evans)
