DELTA HELPS LONDON BRING IN THE NEW YEAR.
One of the more unusual audio briefs for 2008/09 was Delta Sound’s remit for the Mayor of London’s New Year’s Eve celebration, held in its traditional location on the banks of the River Thames in central London.
Originally called in five years ago to simply amplify the bells of Big Ben at the allotted hour, the scope of Delta’s contract has expanded significantly and now includes audio coverage for a 2km stretch of the north bank of the river from Westminster Bridge to Temple.
Produced by experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide and sponsored by LG, the event attracted around 250,000 people who braved the freezing conditions. They were rewarded with moving video projected onto the 108m high Shell Building, supplied for the first time by ETC, a spectacular fireworks display launched from the London Eye and a series of barges on the river, once again produced by French pyrotechnics company Group F, as well as a Radio One hosted show by Nihal which provided entertainment throughout the evening, plus the musical countdown sequence to midnight.
“With the general ambient level in the area, it’s impossible to hear the bells unaided,” explains Delta Sound managing director Paul Keating. “And our brief back in 2004 was for that alone. Our role has grown over the years and we now provide audio for a significant stretch of the River.”
To achieve this, a number of smart masts were supplied by Summit steel and positioned in each of the gardens along Victoria Embankment. From these, Delta hung clusters of five V-Dosc and three dV-Dosc per mast to cover the primary viewing area for the London Eye. Three cranes, each with hangs of 16V-Dosc, were utilised to extend the coverage to include Waterloo Bridge and beyond to Temple.
Delta’s main control position was located in its ex-BBC OB sound truck at Horse Guards Avenue, from where a 4km fibre network, controlled via BSS Soundweb, was run to the main mast positions to manage the PA system. A microwave link was positioned on top of each crane, relaying off the top of the Shell Building, to provide the show feed, with the mix supplied from Delta’s new DiGiCo SD8 digital mixing console operated by Front of House engineer Richard Sharratt. The sound system was also used site-wide for announcements for crowd control post event by the police.
“The microphone feeds from Big Ben Clock Tower are tricky,” says senior project manager for Delta Sound, Steve Lutley. “Over years, Delta has developed a system that works via IP and Cobranet technologies, with one end of system at the Tower, the other end at control approx 1km.
“Additionally, we supplied the timing for the video projection and used the audio network to delay the system to correspond with the video, ensuring correct lip sync.”
Delta also supplied a comms systems that comprised multiple repeater channels for approx 300 handsets, which included a base unit infrastructure located on the Shell Building and another at Big Ben, providing links to Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge, Waterloo, Embankment and Temple Bridge. A total of six links were used covering 2km, which had to interface with the Event Control and stewards.
An additional, separately trunked, fully redundant comms system was supplied for the stewards who were counting the public into the various areas.
“West to east radio coverage was from Lambeth Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge and north to south from Trafalgar Square to Waterloo,” explains Phil Kidd, Delta’s communications manager. “We had eight channels in total with a laser IP link, specially purchased for this year’s project, connecting the wired comms system across the river. In previous years a fibre system was used, so the laser dramatically reduced the scale of the fibre network.”
“We had to cover a vast area and deploy a complicated communications system,” concludes Keating. “But the evening went off without a hitch. In fact, by 3.30am everything was cleared away and you would never have known we were there.”
Pictures courtesy of JMW
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