Event production by SLS Production Arabia
The Korean boy band “ATEEZ”, often referred to as “Global Performance Idols” by Korean media brought their “The Fellowship: Break the Wall” tour to Saudi Arabia. The show was part of their world tour and was held at Jeddah Superdome. On top of its global success as a genre, K-pop is becoming most popular in the global audience as it is introducing unique Korean concepts of cultural, diversity and performance to the audience. Fans came together in Jeddah from different parts of the world and enjoyed Ateez, celebrating music, culture and elevating the K-pop production machine into an effervescent assembly of catchy and dynamic performance.
Project Manager Anuj Naik led the team for SLS Production, along with Lee Irving, Structural Engineer, Hemant Rao Lighting & SFX Engineer. Marvin Dela Cruz Video Engineer, Kevin Shyamprasad was in charge of Rigging & Staging and Arun Kumar Senior Audio Engineer designed and guided the audio team.
The Ateez Production team from Korea were very particular on achieving the design concepts as they were on a world tour with a distinctive look and feel created for “The Fellowship: Break the Wall” tour. K-pop has become truly a global phenomenon with its distinctive blend of addictive melodies, slick choreography and an endless parade of high energy performers, keeping a high standard production value was a top priority for SLS Production.
Commenting on the project, Edwin Cheeran, Managing Director, SLS Production said, “We are delighted to be associated with 360 Production for Ateez’s “The Fellowship: Break the Wall” concert at KSA. We focused on delivering the striking story that the client wanted to communicate through this event, much work was done understanding and benchmarking previous production cases of this type of performance and the team came together to produce an amazing show”.
Edwin furthered saying that, “K-Pop as a genre and its explosion onto the international stage has once again brought to light the high standards and spectacular production value that aspiring artists and production companies must attain to entertain the audiences. It was a testament to the team in delivering the creativity and aesthetics as expected which was acknowledged by the client and artists”,
Summarizing the event experience, Anuj said “the client was very pleased with the setup. The production team had a specific stage design to meet the performance requirements and this was an opportunity for us to use our knowledge and equipment in different ways to meet the needs of the performance. The challenge was to squeeze in all the requirements in a temporary structure, as the original stage design was designed for arena venues, and the crew pulled out all the strings together to ensure a spectacular production result”.
Keeping in mind the high production value that K-pop concerts offers, SLS Production had a very unique solution to render a polished audio, video and lighting aesthetic for the energetic audience. The event had installed the new SLS Ultra-Tri-Fold structure for the first time, which was 58m wide and 18m high. The SLS team of engineered and riggers came together to deliver the structure in only 3 days.
“There is an abundance of staging and trussing material available in various markets around globe right now. The Ultra Tri-Fold allows for faster and easier width changes using the basics of simply adding or removing a main truss for width alterations without having to bring in major component changes. It is designed around the ringlock scaffold dimensions that have been most commonly found in the entertainment industry for the past three decades, these harmonious features indeed played a pivotal role in delivering an expected result” said Lee, talking about the trussing system.
The main stage was installed using a scaffolding equipment with aluminum channels which were 66m wide and 20m deep, with an audience ramp protruding 18m deep and 12m wide. The stage design had an automated LED screen which could raise and lower and split. The stage lift was installed by WI Creation which was 13m wide and 1.5m depth, this was brought from Belgium. The team had also installed the Kabuki drop system.
SLS production’s audio team provided a comprehensive Meyer Sound design paired with Digico Consoles. The system comprised 24x LEO – M & 4x LYON W for Main PA. 20x LYON M & 6x LYON W for Outfills. 24x LEOPARD were used for Front Fills all, delivering a crystal-clear uniform audio experience for the audience. Low frequencies were handled by 18x 1100 LFC in Flown Cardioid & 12 x 1100 LFC in Stacked Cardioid configurations delivering a high impact low-end energy to the listeners.
All audio processing was via 6 x Meyer Sound GALAXY 816, MAPP3D software from Meyer Sound played a huge role in achieving the design and achieving the seamless clarity across the audience. Gigacore 10 by Luminex Networking helps deliver redundant AVB digital audio to our processors throughout our network.
“Coming to the controls, we always have been part of the Digico ecosystem with significant investments in consoles and accessories. The team did not think twice about assigning Digico consoles for this show. For Front of House, we used a Digico SD10 paired with 2x DigiGrid Waves Servers and for the Monitors, we used a Digico SD12 with 2x Waves Extreme Soundgrid Servers. IO was Digico SD-RACK with 32bit I/O cards that gave us enough Input & Output options, the 2 racks were shared with both Control Desks through Optocore” said Arun Kumar, Senior Audio Engineer.
Complete RF was entrusted to Shure. Shure UR4D systems were used for capturing vocals and PSM1000 for In-Ear Monitoring. On stage monitoring was taken care of by Meyer Sound with 8x MJF212 & 4x MJF210 for on stage monitoring. Sidefill consisted of 8x Meyer Sound LEOPARD & 4x 900LFC.
For Communications, we deployed a combined system of Clear Com FreeSpeak II & Helixnet; a total of 50x FreeSpeak & 24x Helixnet belt packs were deployed for the smooth running of the show. Our highly experienced crew had extensive preplanning completed for the event and configurations preloaded ahead of schedule resulting systems being ready to run ahead of schedule and before the Ateez Production team arrived.
Summarizing the video set-up, the stage was comprised of 453.5m² of Infiled GXmk2 4.63mm LED screen panels and 171m² of Absen TS3 3.9/7.8mm transparent LED screen panels. Controlled by Novastar H-Series of LED controllers, comprising of 1x H9, 2x H2 and 8x CVT4k with full redundancy in mind. In the front of house, control consisted of 3x Disguise gx3, Barco E2 Gen2, and Luminex Gigacore 30i 10G networking.
Reminiscing the event. Video Engineer, Marvin Dela Cruz, added by Video Systems Engineer – Clinton Due, commented, “The show was pre-programmed by the touring team with a little bit tweaking of the pixel mapping we were ready for rehearsals. Given we had ample time for set up and planning, the team worked systematically and delivered on time. The coordination between all departments was on point, it was truly a wonderful experience for the whole team”.
Lighting complimented the extensive video supply, with Lighting Engineer & SFX, Hemanth Rao overseeing the deployment. The lighting equipment comprised 24 x Martin Viper Performance, 48 x Robe Spider, 20 x Magic Panel, 56 x Cyclops beam 300, 99 x SGM P-5, 48 x Robe Tetra 2 linear bar, 16 x led molefay. In addition, the bands key light was delivered by 12 follow spots. Atmospheric effects used in this concert were MDG haze generators supported by Le Maitre and robe smoke machines. FOH desks consisted of MA2 full size, with BOH running 4 MA Network processing units giving redundant signal boost to all systems overhead and on floor package.
Talking about his experience, Head LX on site, Hemanth Rao, said, “the show was preprogrammed by the touring team and had to assist in some changes in terms of positions, focus points and editing the time code cues. Great team to work with and we had ample time to setup. SLS lighting team consists of 8 crew members, they did a great job in terms of cable management, setting timelines for the overhead rig and floor package to be ready for the touring crew, resulting a seamless and immersive experience to the audience”.
