McLean Audio Services are no strangers to the high-pressure world of live TV broadcasting. For many years they have been associated with most of Melbourne’s premier live Television and corporate events.
The Logie Awards are Australia’s premier awards for The Australian Television Industry and rate in the top echelon of ‘A’ list glitterati spectaculars, however this year’s show was to be even more technically demanding.
A live televised awards show accompanied by orchestral backing was not unusual. Normally, the orchestras musicians would be tucked up comfortably in a sound isolated off stage area and all performances would be carefully controlled and managed to optimise sonic results and minimise the technical difficulties that could impede a smooth television production.
In an adventurous departure from tradition, the show’s producer, Peter Wynne wanted to achieve greater musical impact for the audience with a “live concert feel” for the proceedings that would hopefully result in an event more reminiscent of the great showcase events when Television was in it’s early heyday.
The orchestra, stage band and performers would be performing and amplified live all in the same room as the audio system, audience and the TV production.
This was going to be a demanding task; the audio system must not intrude either visually or technically and any problems would be of the ‘career ending type’ in front of a very large viewing audience.
McLean Audio’s Richard Bilinski in consultation with Steve Delmenico Channel 9’s audio director for the event decided to try something new that he hoped would handle many of the potential problems in one swoop. The new Nexo Geo-S system had the directivity, compact size and lightweight that would make it easy to fly and control.
This was a bold move as this would be the first time McLean’s had employed the Nexo Geo S system at a live televised awards ceremony.
After modelling the venue with the proprietary Nexo Geo array software, considering all the camera angles and audience/performer positioning, four compact hangs of Geo were planned.
The L+R program was divided evenly between the four arrays. The outer hangs consisted of five Geo-s 805 and one 830 enclosures while the inner boxes consisted of four 805 and one 830. Richard and his crew found the array modelling software a very accurate prediction against actual performance with no sacrifice in coverage.
At the show’s end there was wall-to-wall smiles as the maiden gig for the Geo went off without a hitch.
Richard purchased the Geo system after an extensive evaluation of many of the line array technologies available. Not known for rushing in to the first fad product or believing spurious technical arguments, Richard and the crew at McLeans see the Geo as an effective tool in getting the right results when the event organiser says, “I’ve got this great idea but it’s probably impossible”.
