Australia-based Norwest Productions provided the audio for the 29th Southeast Asian Games and the 9th edition of the ASEAN Para Games, with DiGiCo SD5s positioned at Front of House, SD9s deployed for audio patch control, and SD8s at the Closing Ceremony’s monitor position.
The 2-hour Opening Ceremony held at KL Sports City in Kuala Lumpur 19-30 August 2017 played to an audience of around 85,000 and was also broadcast live across the region. Hosted by Malaysian entertainers Yasmin Yusof and Raymond Goh, the four-act display showcased Malaysia’s history and culture, as well as celebrating ASEAN unity through song and dance, and culminated in a fireworks extravaganza. The Closing Ceremony featured the Malaysian Armed Forces performing Negaraku, the national anthem of Malaysia, followed by a parade of the athletes who had taken part in the Games.
Norwest was asked to provide a turnkey audio service, from audio design and supply, through to crew and operation of all audio requirements, which included 6 DiGiCo consoles and an L-Acoustics loudspeaker system, which included 100 Kudo and 48 KS28 cabinets.
“The 2 SD5s for FOH were position in the Level 1 seating bowl, with Ian Shapcott expertly mixing,” said Andrew Marsh, Special Projects Manager at Norwest. “We were utilising the consoles’ MADI I/O ports as well as their Optocore fibre ports and they were mirrored, despite one being on our main network and one being on our backup network. They also provided some of the monitoring duties, like headline artist IEMs and VIP areas, plus they fed the broadcast unit with stems and replay.”
Audio patch control utilised 2 SD9s, operated by patch engineer Ian Cooper to mix programme and comms lines to feed Level 2 and Level 3 IEMs for the mass cast. Once again, these were mirrored and used both MADI and Optocore ports.
Because of its live nature, an additional 2 SD8s again mirrored and on the main and backup networks were supplied for monitor duties for the Closing Ceremony, which were operated by John Watterson, who handled all the stage wedge and headline artist IEM monitor duties.
“As usual for these high I/O and complex mixing jobs, DiGiCo consoles presented the greatest flexibility, I/O count and connectivity prowess when compared with all other live mixing consoles,” says Andrew. “And their integration of Optocore technology is unique and extremely powerful. Their mixing functionality and usability over other brands is also a major feature.
“Having main and backup consoles mirroring one another, whilst not necessarily attached to the same I/O or network, is a unique scenario to these events, and one that DiGiCo consoles helps us achieve more elegantly, and the ability to send feeds to other consoles on the network is a huge advantage. I believe their words were ‘Norwest, the best!’ and we have had amazingly positive feedback from many other people, including the staff from the production and spectators who came to the ceremonies,” Watterson concluded.