Page 227 - Protec PR Book Volume 2

The company’s Managing Director, Barry Pavic says, “Attracting a global clientele and elevating the overall guest experience completely from Entrance to Exit”, is the ultimate goal – which translates into shows that fans want to keep returning to. “We strive to make sure that everyone has a good time.”
With such a strong reputation to preserve Protec combined their resources to provide industry standard Video, Audio, Lighting, Backline, Stage & Set elements and full rigging services.
Tasked with project managing the event for Protec was Simon Travis, interfacing with Envie Events, Backbone International and the Sensation crew from Holland.
Travis said: “Meydan is very different from the usual kind of dance music venue, particularly because it’s a race track so we had to consider the horses stabled there, in terms of noise levels. We had restricted time slots where we could carry out the work. The noise was very strictly controlled as they didn’t want to freak out the horses, though they did move them off site for the show day.”
The team from Envie Events added, “Meydan is a great venue with more than 8,000 parking spots, exceptional infrastructure facilities and perfect distance from downtown Dubai. Makes it a very attractive venue for a global series like Sensation. Working on Meydan does bring its challenges and having an experienced partner like Protec really makes the difference”.
Protec Lighting department, in the shape of Aaron Russ – the company’s Lighting HOD and Paul Coopes, provided a mixture of their frontline Robe, Martin and Clay Paky fixtures. This included 45 Robe Pointe fixtures mounted on the triangular backdrop set, both on stage left and stage right screens, and also on the main triangle for the main stage. Inside the scaffold structure was a combination of 37 Clay Paky K10 B-eyes and seven Clay Paky K20’s, which were positioned in various parts of the scaffolding structure for uplighting effects, giving the scaffold a funky industrial look.
A further 28 Martin Atomic strobes were positioned on the floor, the walkways where the dancers were performing and within the set itself. Another 50 Par36 single par pinspots were mounted onto the structure as well as onto the bars above the Robe Pointe fixtures to create a tremendous blinding effect, while along the front edges of the stage 28 Clay Paky show battens lit up the dancers.
All were brought to life by a combination of Le Maître and MDG hazers with all lighting dynamics under the control of three grandMA full-size consoles at FOH, (including spare), and two grandMA NPUs.
Popular SGM low-profile LED fixtures were also involved in the shape of P5’s for the VIP decks and Q7’s to light up the bars.
For the front of the DJ riser, Protec chose 16 Jarag lights, all DMX controllable, so they could be programmed to have words flashing through. This provided an extra dimension to what was already a really well-lit set.
At FOH Protec also placed Clay Paky Scenius Unico fixtures — little spots that served as various lighting positions for the dancers.
Finally, for the entrance, Protec featured 12 x Clay Paky Super Sharpies to create a welcoming effect, controlled from a ChamSys MagicQ MQ60 desk.
Under the direction of Scott Walker Protec’s Video HOD, the company deployed three screens on stage – stage left and stage right, for which they used their 6mm Mambo LED panels (13 panels wide x 7 panels high, 10 meters x 5.5 meters high) in a triangular shape. For the main screen they used their 9mm panels (21 panels wide x 11 panels high, 16 meters x 8.5 meters high) also in triangular shape. These were controlled from NovaStar VX4S processors, fed from the media servers of the Sensation production team.
Three Panasonic remote cameras were focused on the DJs, which could be controlled from a single remote at FOH, and were vision mixed through a Roland V1200HD.
Signals were run from FOH to the LED control backstage via Protec’s Lightware 220pro fibre transmitters and receivers and three 150m Neutrik fibre cables. Lightware MX DVI-PRO matrixes were used at FOH and backstage to control the signal routing and switch between main and backup signals. The live footage was mixed to the screens and overlaid with content provided by Sensation, operated by the touring LD.
Because of the triangular shapes of the screens Protec were unable to hang the screen from truss so instead had to ground stack, which because of the size of the screen presented them with rigging challenges, all overcome easily enough though. All panels had to be safely secured to a scaffolding structure at the rear of the screens.