Heading up the Gearhouse SA team was Ian Watts, who is operation’s manager of the Johannesburg branch’s audio-visual department. Ian was project manager of the Standard Bank Stars and comes with 15 years’ experience in the broadcast industry - at the SABC, and M-Net as well as Gearhouse Broadcast on an international basis. What made the Standard Bank Stars so unique was that the event took place simultaneously at 11 venues throughout South Africa, with its main ‘hub’ being the Pavilion at the Sandton Convention Centre (SCC) in Gauteng.
Activities at the SCC were broadcast live to other areas of South Africa (including Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and another four venues in Johannesburg itself) while live audio feeds from each of the other 10 venues were broadcast back to the SCC. Gearhouse SA provided technical input for each venue, with the Pavilion at the SCC requiring a great deal more equipment and technicians including three large cube walls and a very big stage, which featured speeches, awards, live performances from the bands and backing dancers.
Structures, lighting, audio, rigging and AV was provided in each of the venues, but the key element was facilitating the broadcast from the SCC to the outlying venues, during the periods when live crossings were required. A digital Outside Broadcast van was situated at the SCC, and close to 10 cameras were present, with the feed having gone up on the DSTV satellite infrastructure on a dedicated channel for the night.
"It’s quite unique in that there were many different venues," explains Ian, "and it’s logistically a big challenge. We had to rent a fleet of vehicles and there was four technicians at each venue. They arrived the day before, set-up and tested everything, especially the broadcast signals. It’s was really a big job on the equipment side - for example, we needed well over 30 projectors on one day - and I don’t think there was another company that could have facilitated that."
(Lee Baldock)
