Page 64 - Protec PR Book Volume 2

The mountains themselves were built out of base scaffold structures with carpet fascia that was painted to resemble rocky and moss/grass covered mountains and finished off with artificial greenery and landscaping. The mountains also had to be strong enough to withstand powerful pyro explosions at various heights, soldiers’ abseiling, zip lining and a lot of personnel movement. Over 400 tonnes of ballast was used to secure the structures which worked well with the high and dangerous wind speeds experienced especially during the build-up.
Two 16m x 9m LED screens were built into the upstage mountain structures with access to work behind them.
The audio package provided by Protec included 40 x L-acoustics K2 in blocks of 4 ground stacked with L-acoustics SB28 subs positioned between each set of two K2 stacks. Protec’s Head of Audio – Ed Ross explained, “We ran a dual redundant fibre network using Digico racks running digital outs and Optocore Sane units running analogue outputs to the LA8 amplifiers, this complemented our use of the SD10 mixing desk with SD-RE redundant engine which meant we could lose kit or connections anywhere in the network and not lose audio or control at all.” Ross continued, “For communications we used a Clearcom matrix and a selection of control panels, helix net belt backs and Motorola digital radios, these were integrated with Riedel RiFace units for seamless communication across platforms.”
When asked about the process of creating a show like this, Andradé said, “This is a very unique show. It’s not as simple as using your imagination and delivering an action movie styled show because it also has to be realistic in the sense that it being a military show demonstration, it needed to involve military procedures and methods. This calls for some serious research and coordination. From a creative standpoint, we had already done a desert theme and a port theme so this time had to be in a completely different setting. So mountains it was this time.
Once we had the setting, we had to develop the storyline that had to be creative and yet practical and most importantly – safe for them to perform live.”