Music fans show solidarity for backstage workers
- Details
This solidarity rally was initiated and produced by Tali Yaacobi Events Production and backed by Inbar and Marius Nacht – an Israeli entrepreneur, social activist, and philanthropist – who made a generous donation to all the crew working on the show.
The lighting and audio were supplied by Argaman Systems – including a large Robe moving light rig which was designed by Cochavi & Klein and operated by two of Israel’s best-known lighting professional, Eran Klein (of Cochavi & Klein) and Ronen Najar.
When Eli Cochavi (CEO of Cochavi & Klein) was asked by Tali Yacobi to join the production, he assembled the design team, with Eran Klein as head of design and Omer Israeli as lighting designer. They instantly started sparking ideas and enjoying a great synergy as if a single day had not passed since they were separated by the COVID-19 lockdown!
Stated Eran, “Our industry was the first to shut down in late February and will be the last to come back, and that includes anything related to ‘culture’. With complete silence from the government department of sport and culture, we feel strongly that the officials don’t really comprehend exactly what we do, why we do it and especially how important our production industry really is! We feel invisible, and this protest was to raise awareness of the role of the whole performance industry in a functioning society.”
Eran also recalls the absolutely electric atmosphere and emotions boiling over, especially during closing number, with veteran Israeli rocker Shalom Hanoch onstage belting out his seminal hit Waiting for the Messiah accompanied by every person in the estimated 3000 audience.
Concerts in Israel are still banned under state of emergency and social distancing laws. This gig took place with the backing of the Israeli police and the city of Tel Aviv.
The 14m-wide by 8m-deep stage was supplied by the Stage Design Group, with video from Clean LED and all the onsite health & safety delivered by B-Safe.
The stage design – by Avi Fahima of Forma Studio – featured a series of Layher structural cubes offering a fragmented and broken look, and the visual design including video and lighting followed this concept. The actual performance space was smaller than normal as it was a protest rally rather than a concert.
The lighting design was based on the fact that the occasion was to highlight behind the scenes workers, so some fixtures were placed literally “behind the scenes” and in inaccessible places to aesthetically emphasise this fact and in doing so actually representing the backstage community.
Forty MegaPointes were used in multiple positions – eight each on the two upstage trusses above the band which where outrigged for different levels for enhanced depth. There were to additional L-shaped trusses mid-stage, each with six MegaPointes, and another four on each downstage truss outrigged from the inner PA towers and facing the crowds. Four more were on the upstage risers.
The Spiiders were grouped together for side washing across the stage and in two clusters in between the MegaPointes to attain big anthemic inspirational looks and punches.
For key light – because there was no time to install a ground support system as the police allowed only one day setup, they used six BMFL Blades a side in two rows.
Sun Strips downstage produced a nice tungsten cross light glow and follow spots were boosted by two Robert Juliat 2500s.
The rally lasted two hours with a combination of speeches and music.
Heading up the production team was Ofer Gover, working with director Rubi Cohen of the Rosh Hutsot Group. The production manager was Lea Buskila, the operations producer was Adva Mainz, Eran Mitelman was the musical director, and the sound design was created by Yair Goren (with live audio operated by the aforementioned Lior Tevet).
The live camera / IMAG mix was cut by Ido Kagan, video content was produced by Asaf Diamabt and the VJ was Dorian Natan. All the technical production was co-ordinated by Eyal Katz + Yochai Tamir, with Guy Sadot keeping busy as the official videographer.
The latest news is that live events in Israel are likely to re-open in mid-June with small concerts up to 500 people and theatres able to open with restricted capacities.
(Jim Evans)
