Following the completion of South Africa’s fifth democratic elections the ANC once again arose victorious with their leader, President Jacob Zuma, at the helm. His inauguration took place at the Union Buildings on Saturday 24 May 2014 and was a fanfare of celebration, high fashion, international dignitaries and, of course, a concert open to the public featuring some of South Africa’s top artists including the Soweto Gospel Choir, Zahara, Kurt Darren, The Soil, Salaelo Selota, Mango Groove, Uhuru, and Rebecca Malope.

Three separate areas where designated for the day’s events: the Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre where the inauguration itself took place; a VVIP marquee tent at the presidential guest house; and the South Lawns where the concert was held. Local high-profile production company VWV along with leading technical supply company Sound Stylists partnered up and were awarded the task of handling the day’s production and technical requirements, respectively.

The Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre

The inauguration took place at the Nelson Mandela Amphitheatre, which is the centrepiece to the Union Buildings, the administrative seat of our nation. Built in 1913 and designed by architect Sir Herbert Baker in the English monumental style, they are 285m long and feature a semi-circular shape in the centre, creating a half-moon court, and two wings at the sides; the idea being that it represented the union of a formally divided people. As this notion originally harked back to the tumultuous beginnings of South Africa, the metaphor is still poignant today and could be seen to represent a newly unified people under democracy.

The semi-circular Amphitheatre became the backdrop to the inauguration of President Jacob Zuma and the audience and dignitaries were seated around a central covered stage structure surrounded by red carpets.

A total of 24 Coda LA8s were configured as four hangs of four elements for the main system while behind the amphitheatre there were four stacks of two on top of LA8 Subs to handle delayed coverage. Four further LA8 Subs were used for the main system, totalling eight all-round. Camco V8 amplification drove the system entirely. For additional fill, eight Nexo PS10Ps were utilised for the delayed balcony system, also powered by Camco.

“It was a bit of a difficult one,’ comments Sound Stylists director Kevin Glover, “because there was no point source from which everything emanated. You’ve got the speech, which is obviously your main point of interest, but then the band was at the back of the venue, the choir elsewhere and they all play together. It was a bit of a wild one in that respect but obviously the important part was the main ceremony, which everyone was there for.’

FOH, handled by Simon van Niekerk, received two Yamaha PM5D consoles cascaded for redundancy while system processing was handled by an XTA 428 audio management system. A combination of AKG, Audio Technica, Sennheiser and Shure microphones were employed to mic up the choir, the orchestra and the podium.
For monitoring, run by Van Niekerk from FOH, the choir and orchestra received six Nexo PS8s, powered by Camco and Nexo amplifiers while the podium received two Quest QSA 200i powered loudspeakers.

Flanking either side of the amphitheatre were LED screens affixed to Milos screen truss towers. The 16mm screens measured 5m x 3m that were fed by three live cameras, an SABC feed and a remote camera for the sign language interpreter. The video system was run by a Folsom ScreenPro II HD/SDI seamless switcher and a Roland VS800 vision mixer.

Since this was a daytime event, the only lighting to be found was an array of 12 ADB F201 2kW fresnels with barn doors to, as Glover says: “give the cameras a bit of punch.’ The lighting system was run by an Avolite Pearl Expert console and Jands FPX12 dimmers.

The Southern Lawns

The Southern Lawns, which lie perpendicular to the union buildings behind the gardens, were the locale where the public were treated to a concert featuring some of South Africa’s top artists; FOH duties being handled by Audio Logic’s Marius Marais and project management by Sound Stylist’s Colin Loock. The stage structure for the event, supplied by local technical supply company CES through Sound Stylists, measured 18m x 14m and included 6m x 3m daylight screen structures, 13m x 6m PA towers and 13m x 4m outfill PA towers; all Layher.

In terms of the audio system, Glover gives an overview: “We had 12 Coda LA12s a side. We brought in four extra SC8 subs so we had a total of sixteen; eight a side. It might not sound like much but it was pretty impressive. The sub in itself is 150dBSPL peak so we worked out the ratio; if we had to put in the Nexo S2s as an alternative we would have needed something like 128 of them to give comparable performance.’

Accordingly, the mammoth 4 x 18′ SC8s were flown on either side of the main hangs in order to get the throw distance they were looking for. Twelve further Nexo Alphas were placed under the stage as front-fills to cover the first few rows while the out-fill arrays consisted of eight Nexo GEO-Ds a side to achieve 100 degree horizontal dispersion. A combination of Camco Vortex, Nexo and Crown IT-4000 amplifiers powered the system.

“The distance to front of house was 110m,’ says Glover, “which actually worked quite nicely because it was right in front of the statue so you had the whole expanse of lawn with nothing in the way, which opened it up quite nicely. We ended up pushing 122dBSPL at front of house and about 110 dB SPL A-weighted at the back of the venue so we were well over spec. Across the venue we had pretty good coverage with an average of 120dBSPL.’

Kyle Robson, operational support head at Coda and DiGiCo distributor Tadco, was commissioned by Sound Stylists to help configure all the Coda and DiGiCo systems in use at the inauguration concert in terms of interconnectivity and distribution, and to get the DiGiCo D5s purring nicely.

“Once everything was connected we used Smaart to time align all the stacks and set levels,’ says Robson. “We then got stuck into the D5s, got all the racks together and ran the cables. We ended up using RME MADI interfaces to convert BNC to fibre so we could achieve the far run to FOH.’

Sound Stylists opted to go the MADI bridge route because of damage concerns. While they carry and often use DiGiCo Optocore connectivity, in this case there was no available backup in the case of a failure. Redundancy was a clear issue for something as important for the presidential inauguration so the final solution was to run MADI-bridged multi-mode fibre to the back of the venue along with a redundant line.

The original spec for the show called for two 48-channel consoles but that was changed because the final show spec ended up at 112 channels. As a result, the two DiGiCo D5s were employed to handle the increased channel count; one for FOH and one for monitors. Monitoring duties were handled by Sound Stylist’s Rayne Ramsden.
As is often the case, however, there were slight but not insurmountable challenges. Robson comments: “Being older technology, the D5s use socket files to configure the rack quantities and the various card types in the system. The arduous process is to open these socket files in Wordpad and you spend a lot of time making sure it’s all typed out correctly otherwise you have to deal with a flood of error messages. One mistake and you could be going through many headaches.’

For on-stage monitoring, six JBL SRX712m’s were used as floor wedges while side-fills comprised four Nexo Alpha M3/B1-15/S2 stacks; two a side. The resident band received an Aviom AD-16 personal monitoring system with Shure PSM1000 in-ear monitoring systems.

There was a considerable amount of radio microphone systems needed to support the show. On Sound Stylist’s end a total of 24 Shure ULX-D, UR and R wireless microphone systems were employed to achieve the desired frequency ranges. Additionally, the Mzansi Youth Choir brought along its own engineer, console and wireless systems and fed a sub-mix to FOH. This obviously brought along with it the danger of conflicting RF bands but with a little bit of careful planning and a little bit of good luck, there were no problems.

“It actually didn’t give us much of an issue,’ says Glover. “We had pre-planned it before we went in to make sure we had the separation that we needed, but we were fortunate that they slotted in with what we needed and there were no problems.’
There were concessions, however, as the airwaves became cluttered in other ways.
“The wireless Clear-Com system that we wanted ran on the 2.4Ghz RF band but they had put up WiFi over the lawns so we were forced to go back to wired comms and two-way radios, which was fine,’ says Glover.

Being a daytime event the lighting, while substantial, was limited to keeping the stage illuminated which had its back to the sun. The LD for the event was Sound Stylists’ Shawn Crawley.

“The original brief was for 24 parcans, 24 spots and 24 washes,’ says Glover. “We elected to go entirely LED. So we put in 24 Robe 600s, 12 Robe 100s, 24 High End StudioPixes and 16 of the new Ayrton WILDBEAM-Rs. Because it was a day show we used the 600s to give a general wash across the stage and the StudioPixes to reinforce that. However, essentially everything was eye candy at the end of the day. Inside the stage, because it had its back to the sun, was just a big dark hole so we had to get that to pop out as much as possible.’

Additionally, 16 Robe Cityskapes were rigged vertically on either side of the stage.
The lighting console was an Avolites Pearl Expert Touch. The Artnet output from the console was converted to Ethernet via a bridge and subsequently fibre which was run to stage and back to FOH. Two LSC Nexus Ethernet to DMX converters were implemented to accommodate a total of 72 fixtures and six universes, which resulted in a sizeable lighting rig despite the fact it was a daytime event.

As is now the norm in most large scale events, two 25m2 25mm pitch Megaview LED screens were rigged on either side of the stage. A two-camera system was employed and all vision mixing was accomplished via a Roland V1600HD while satellite uplinks were distributed through local broadcasting experts Telemedia.

The VVIP tent

The VVIP tent at the presidential guest house was the most low-key of all of the locales utilised for the inauguration with the SA Navy Band being the only performer at this venue.

The audio system consisted of four Nexo PS15s and four PS15B units as the main system and six Coda 712s as floor wedges, all driven by Camco amplifiers. A Yamaha M7 was the console of choice.

A basic lighting system was the order of the day, consisting of 12 Robe 100s equipped with diffusion filters for a basic stage wash.

The wrap

The 2014 Presidential Inauguration (while executed without a hitch) was no small affair and required much planning and delegation. Sound Stylists, along with VWV and all involved clearly hit the target right on the mark and delivered an excellent service, not only to the public who came out in droves to enjoy the music, but to the dignitaries that attended, our leadership and ultimately to our nation. The technical crew are the unsung heroes in any event but in this case, South Africa salutes you!