SNOWBOMBING
THE RACKET CLUB: A NEW VISUAL DESIGN, LED & LASER EXPERTISE… PLUS THE PEOPLE’S SOUND SYSTEM. d&b VSUBs, 12 Turbosound TFM-450 Monitors and an Audile CS-215 Drum Sub. Additionally, 4 Sennheiser EW-935 G3 handheld radio mics and 4 Sennheiser EW-300 G3 IEM systems were on hand. Speaking about the recent merger, Leach noted: “Our lighting and rigging offering has been greatly strengthened. We’ve worked so closely with dbn throughout our careers in Audile, that it all just made sense. It seemed like a very logical step going forward in this industry. We were already so collaborative that together we can become something extra special.” Ashworth agreed: “Audile has enjoyed a strong presence in the UK festival market for years, and dbn’s been particularly strong in their corporate and arts work. As a result we’ve now got a lot of very experienced Directors and Project Managers under one roof, and can have more people dedicated to individual gigs than ever before.” www.dbnaudile.co.uk
dbnAudile’s Rob Leach and Rob Ashworth.
Much more than just a vendor, Snowbombing veteran - and sound and lighting supplier, dbnAudile (newly named, after the two Manchesterbased companies merged) - once more provided expert technical designs, equipment and 24-hour tech cover for its role at the festival. Director Rob Leach explained: “It’s all about coming up with something fresh and exciting. We’re lucky here because we’ve got a couple of days for the build to take place with a good-sized team on site, yet at the same time we’ve got to get everything sorted out for every venue around the entire festival and resort. “A big feature in The Racket Club this year is the emphasis we’ve placed on the lighting and video design, letting the LED take centre stage. It’s always very challenging to do what we need to in there because the EDM market has become so big everywhere that simply to come up with something that’s brand new every year is a big task.” Is there is pressure on this design to stand out in particular? “In a way, yes because the other venues are quite idiosyncratic - in an igloo or in a forest where the natural beauty of the scenery and landscapes add something to the production value. Whereas The Racket Club is a very purpose-designed space, with the festival goers in mind. “Personally, I love designing shows that can be broken up, moved around and ultimately able to change the perspective of the stage for the audience. We’ve tried to make the video elements as 3D as possible and become more immersive for the crowds. I love designing shape-based gigs!” exclaimed Leach. For fixtures, Leach specified 18 Claypaky Mythos, 36 Robe Robin 100 LEDBeams, 12 Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 FX-B LED Blades, 24 Showtech Active DMX Sunstrip LED Battens, 12 Martin by Harman MAC700 Profiles, 18 Martin by Harman Atomic-3000 Strobes, 2 bars-of-6 JTE PAR-64 1kWs, 18 JTE 2-lite Molefay blinders and 8 ETC Source Four Junior Profiles. The fixtures were controlled via a Chamsys Magic Q Pro 100. Effects included 2 JEM ZR-12 smoke machines, 2 Look Solutions Unique 2 hazer and 2 JEM AF-1 fans. In the sound dept, The Racket Club system remains the same, partly because dbnAudile’s Rob Ashworth - aka Snowbombing’s sound guru - is a fan of Funktion One, and partly because “Big stacks of Funktion One speakers really make a statement in the club... It’s an iconic brand in dance music and that’s what the punters want to see.” A total of 12 Funktion One Resolution-5 mid/hi speakers, 8 Funktion One F-221P powered subs, and 2 Funktion One Resolution-2SH infill speakers made up the PA. Additionally, 3 MC2 amp racks and an XTA Drive Rack were utilised, alongside a Midas PRO2 mixing desk. Monitor speakers were 4 d&b V8’s, 2
Transition Video was tasked with The Racket Club’s mighty LED screen build. The team of five - each working in an LED Tech capacity - rigged every individual drop panel to create a bespoke video wall. “Once we’ve secured the screens, we then hand everything over to Digital Insanity to produce the content,” stated Transition’s Rhodri Shaw. “In various companies, I’ve been working with Snowbombing for the last eight years and this one was quite a challenging rig but I’ve really enjoyed doing this design - it looks brilliant.” Transition utilised 230 WinVision9 9mm LED panels, each panel measuring in at 600mm x 600mm, most of which were an individual drop. “We also supplied the Winvision 2012 processors along with Barco Image Pro II for stage feeds. We had 3 DVI fibre links between stage and FOH to send video from stage to FOH and from FOH to stage as well as a spare. The Arena had a split 4.2m x 2.4m Winvision 9 9mm screen and the DJ played off the top of the front screen with a rear slab behind the DJ,” stated Shaw. “Looking back at the designs throughout the years, this is definitely the best one we’ve done. There was a lot of flexibility with it because of the depth of the circle trusses in the middle of the venue, and having curvatures at the back really added to the complexity of the show. “It is very much a three-dimensional rig, but making something 3D look flat, and then back to 3D again, so that the crowd felt as though something immersive was coming out at them from the video is quite a tricky thing to do, but it worked. The DJ Yoda show was a bit different because he’s got a very cinematic feel to his set, whereas the rest of the content throughout most nights is more abstract content. We had to map Yoda’s 16x9 cinematic visuals to certain areas of the screens to make it all flow the way he wanted to be represented.” www.transitionvideo.com
The Transition Video crew.
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