Created in 1999 by Tell-Tale Productions (now WISH), The Tweenies is a highly successful BBC television series aimed at 3-6 year olds. Over 300 episodes have been made, with arena-sized tours also giving the television audience a chance to see the popular Tweenies characters in the flesh, rather than through the television screen.
2007's Enchanted Toyshop tour has seen the Tweenies do a UK theatre tour for the first time. The more intimate venues mean that children can get even closer to their heroes, but with no compromises on the quality, fun and excitement of the show itself.
The tour began on 16 March and runs through to 27 October, taking in no less than 200 shows in 43 venues with audience capacities ranging from 900- 1600 per show. The demands on the audio production are extremely high, which is why production company Show Support purchased a 32 channel Yamaha LS9 console especially for the tour.
"The LS9 is by far the most feature rich and capable console in its price point on the market today. We own an M7CL and a couple of O1V's with great reliability, so we have plenty of faith in Yamaha," says Richard Rowley, managing director of Show Support.
Having spent the previous 15 years using analogue consoles, the show's front of house engineer Tim Headley had just one afternoon in Show Support's warehouse to familiarise himself with the LS9, before going into four days of show rehearsals.
"At the end of the first week I was loving it," says Tim. "Particularly since, for the first time, I can use my laptop, via a wireless router into the desk, to remotely set up the sound from anywhere in the auditorium, using Yamaha's Studio Manager software."
The tour's main PA comprises six stacks of d&b C4 with four E3s and two Tannoy V12s as fills. This is patched into the house system, with the LS9 ensuring that the mix between the two is utterly seamless.
"I really like the LS9's virtual rack of graphics, which allows me to EQ the house system without actually affecting anything the venue has previously set up," says Headley.
The show is exclusively reliant on pre-recorded audio playback, using two manually synchronised Akai DD8 hard disk recorders. "I start them up simultaneously but don't slave one to the other, just in case the master drops out and loses the backup unit," Headley continues. "On the LS9 I then have two eight channel mixes, which track each other using the desk's channel link mode. As I change the mix during the show, it duplicates it on the second set of faders, so if the main DD8 fails I can quickly and seamlessly use the backup mix."In order to make the show's characters as realistic as possible for the children, the costume of each actor includes a head with a mouth that opens in time to the words of the pre-recorded songs and dialogue. This is achieved by each head containing an ASU (Automatic Sync Unit) which synchronises the mouth movement to an audio feed, which works in a similar way to sound to light units.
"Each actor is sent a left and right monitor feed via a Sennheiser G2 wireless in-ear monitor (IEM) system," says Headley. "The left feeds the actor's IEMs and the right uses a much higher level, feeding the ASU as a pre-fade mix. This way the actors can perform to their own personal soundtrack, with the mouth following the dialogue.
"I use a compressor and a de-esser on each of the characters' channels because of the intensity of some of the dialogue. I can control it and make it far more easy to listen to at high levels. But having two dynamics processors for each channel and the built in SPX effects means that I don't need to carry any outboard. I can fit into much smaller areas at each venue, allowing more seats to be sold."
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