Live Earth Central: See Who Was There
Jul 23, 2007 4:22 PM
Live Earth, the 24-hour, 7-continent concert series that took place on 7/7/07, had the expressed goal of “using music to engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis.” Produced by Control Room, Live Earth staged concerts in London, New Jersey, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Hamburg, as well as special broadcast events in Antarctica, Kyoto, and Washington, DC. More than 100 musical acts like The Police, Genesis, Bon Jovi, Madonna, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, and Jack Johnson took part.
Photo by Robert Hollingworth
Live Earth’s Green Production Mission states: “To create a ‘greener’ concert model that embodies the Live Earth message and leaves the venues and host cities with a ‘how to’ manual for future low-impact live events (i.e. sustainable progress).” Point 9 of that mission statement speaks directly to the entertainment lighting industry. “There will also be virtually no tungsten lighting (incandescent lighting) on the show at all. This sort of equipment, still used largely in the live performance world, uses at least twice as much power as discharge or LED technology (which is) 75-90% more efficient than incandescent lighting.”
At Wembley Stadium in London a crowd of 65,000 gathered for nine hours of environmentally conscientious music. Lighting design was handled by Patrick Woodroffe with assistance from Adam Bassett. TV lighting director was Mark Kenyon with crew chief Rich Gorrod.
The London show served as a template production for the other shows regarding set design and generic layout of lighting. Lighting design was based around a concept rig in terms of trusses, overhead fixtures and approximate layout but it was up to the individual LDs at other sites to adapt the rig to fit their stage and local availability of equipment, according to Bassett.
The London rig included approximately 76 of Martin’s new LED Stagebar 54L fixtures along with MAC 2000 Washes. Equipment was supplied by PRG, with Carol Croft as PRG’s account executive. The basic brief was to create a site that used less power overall with consideration made for a mostly daylight show. A rather large quantity of LED lighting was used supported by a backbone of moving heads used to light the stage.
Woodroffe was looking for LED footlights with additional amber in order to pair those for more acceptable color tones for TV, including warmer whites. He found those in the Martin Stagebar 54. The Stagebars, an RGB, amber, and white pixel bar, were located downstage in two rows about 15’ apart with a camera platform between them. One row on the front edge of the stage pointed out to the audience with a second row used as footlights pointing upstage. In reverse camera shots the continuous line of Stagebars gave a defining edge to the stage.
Twenty-four of i-Pix’s new BB wash-lights were also in action for the Live Earth London show at Wembley Stadium, mounted on the front truss header and used instead of normal 8 light blinders. Using the BBs enabled in the blinder role a six fold reduction in power—the units consumed a total of just 76.8 amps on full power, with each unit pulling just over 1 amp per color over its 16 cells). Had 24 conventional blinders been used, they would have drawn 497.8 amps!
Woodroffe also chose 86 i-Pix’ Satellite LED fixtures for the London show, which were rigged on horizontal trusses and vertical side trusses framing the proscenium arch. These 86 heads on full power consumed a mere total of 14.91 amps. The BB and Satellite units were run from a Catalyst system via a WholeHog II lighting console operated for the show by Nigel Catmur and Will Charles.
Furthermore 32 i-Pix Satellites were chosen by Gearhouse South Africa—also the new i-Pix SA distributor—who took delivery of the units just in time for their event in Johannesburg.
For the Giants Stadium show, each product was carefully chosen by performing side by side comparisons and research on power draws vs. light output versus entertainment value. The final specification included High End System’s Showgun and Coemar’s Infinity wash for the moving lights and a LED battery of 64 PixelLine 1044s. 11 PixelPar 90s were also used to complete the organic rock columns that hung from the rig which incorporated clusters of dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs known as “Eco-Pods.”
