Preceded by last year’s internationally acclaimed 18th edition, the 2013 MTN South African Music Awards (SAMAs) had to live up to expectations, and they did – writes Eddie Hatitye.

Technical producers of South Africa’s grandest musical awards pushed the envelope again this year to present a remarkable installment of the 19th MTN SAMA awards. Staged in the Sun City Superbowl on May 11, the event was beautifully crafted from start to finish.

The majority of the companies that supplied the previous SAMAs were on the bill again this year. These included Vertical Limit Productions (VLP), Nevermachine, Dream Sets, MGG Productions, AV Unlimited, Audio Logic and Visual Frontier. As overall production company VLP provided a 360° production solution and was also responsible for organising the other SAMA events that took place before and after the big night. The VLP team, led by Delmarie Seaward, comprised 65 crew members. Part of their brief from the organisers was to relook the entire production and introduce something fresh and better than last year’s show.

VLP contracted Dream Sets to supply all technical and staging elements. This also involved designing and building the set. AV Unlimited was contracted to supply all video elements while MGG Productions supplied additional lighting gear. The lighting and sound departments were handled by Joshua Cutts and Marius Marais from Visual Frontier and Audio Logic respectively. LaserX supplied the lasers and Nevermachine, headed by Gavin Wratten, directed the show for live broadcast on SABC1.

The set

The set was designed by Wayne Pettit Sproule from Dream Sets and built under the directorship of Robert Hoey. It was certainly one of the highlights of the production, thanks partly to a giant “gazebo’ structure that was erected in the centre of the stage. This structure could turn into a light box and also serve as a perfect projection surface for 3D mapping. The stage offered three main sections; the first being for performances, the second for the house band and the third for awards and speeches. A mobile hi-res LCD screen mounted behind the awards area provided a great backdrop to most of the stage activities.

The gazebo was made of steel covered in Lycra and a special seamless screen material. It was hung off five 1-ton motors and its legs were braced to the ground. On either sides there were two large shapes supporting it on one-ton motors. “It (the gazebo) was really a big risk but it paid off tremendously,’ says Seaward. The remainder of the stage was mostly built with stock rostra and 22-milimetre plywood filler pieces covered with square (1.2 x 1.2 metre) MDF tiles.

It took Dream Sets about a month to build the set offsite and three days to assemble it in the Super Bowl. The set’s various elements and other technical equipment were transported to the venue with two 12-metre flatbed trucks, two 12-metre containers, two eight-ton trucks and one six-ton truck. A total of 52 Dream Sets personnel worked on the project off and onsite.

Video mapping

3D video mapping played a crucial role in the overall look and feel of the production. This process mostly involved AV Unlimited projecting fascinating graphics onto the set’s various objects. The mapping was powered by Coolux’s Pandora’s Box media servers and Barco FLM HD14 projectors. “We piggybacked the large surfaces either side of the centre structure and used a single projector for the side screens,’ explains AV Unlimited’s Dave Thompson. “We then used the Warper in Pandora’s Box to map the set (capture the parameters) and create the warp file of the surfaces.’
Thompson worked closely with Guillaume Ducray, Clive Maake and Sazi Mgaga, all from AV Unlimited.

Lighting

A unique element on this year’s production was the use of time codes built into the audio tracks to help sync the lighting with the audio and video. This allowed lighting designer Joshua Cutts to trigger lighting cues with precision and musical accuracy.

This was Cutts’ second consecutive SAMAs. He decided to light the main gazebo internally. His rig incorporated 48 Clay Paky Sharpys – possibly the highest quantity of Clay Paky Sharpys ever employed on one show in South Africa. He also incorporated a great deal of Robe’s moving lights, Robert Juliat Aramis Followspots, Marin LC Panels and Philips Selecon SPX 36deg profiles. Programming was done onsite using a grandMA 2 full size console and this process took about a week to complete as Cutts had to precisely sync his design with all the audio and video offerings.

In addition to musical director James Bassingthwaighte (from Thatch Music) and creative director Wessel Albertse, Cutts worked closely with Raymond Endermann from LaserX. Endermann was tasked to provide laser effects to the live acts as well as to map parts of the sets. He did this with two 36w Nano Rainbow lasers, one Nano 22w laser and four sets of laser fingers. To control the lasers he used Pangolin Beyond software over a fibre network and the results were truly impressive.

Audio

The sound design was done by Marius Marais of Audio Logic. Marais used the in-house d&b audiotechnik system, which comprised eight J8s loudspeakers, two J12 cabinets and 10 J subs. A total of 12 Q1 out fill cabinets were used to cover the sides of the venue together with four Infra subs, which were stacked on the ground around the venue.

The house mix was done on a Studer Vista 5SR digital mixing console and the mix for the monitors came from a Studer Vista 1. A Soundcraft Vi6 console was reserved for the live broadcast audio mix and in total there were 130 input channels to work with. “This was easily achieved with the Studer consoles,’ explains Marais. “The broadcast mix on the Vi6 was well planned with the snapshot feature, filtering down the input channels to only the needed inputs for each performance.’

The television director did not want any monitors cluttering the stage so the performers had to use in-ear monitoring systems. This also meant that Marais had to spend a great deal of time training them. The in-ears used were a combination of Shure PSM900 and PSM1000 monitors. For the house band Marais used a myMIX monitoring system with 15 stations. A total of 30 handheld radio microphones were used, including Shure, AKG, Audio Technica and Beyer Dynamic. Vocals were done with Shure UR4 and ULX-D radio systems.

Marais’ team comprised seven members, namely Johan Griesel (broadcast engineer), Nathan Thiart (stage tech-house band), Kenson Makeke (stage tech – house band), Christo Visser (radio tech-vocals) and Andre Schoeman (radio tech – in ear monitors). They worked closely with four technicians in the SABC OB van.