The first four days of the new year found more than 60,000 college-aged Christians from around the globe flocking to Atlanta's Georgia Dome for Passion 2013, an annual conference of message and music that just raised over 3.3 million dollars to combat slavery and human trafficking worldwide.
Hosted by Passion City Church Founders Louie and Shelley Giglio, this year's event drew students from 56 countries and 2,300 universities and featured a long list of top Contemporary performers, including Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, Matt Redman, Kari Jobe, Lecrae, Jesus Culture and numerous other artists, alongside notable evangelical speakers like John Piper, Judah Smith, Francis Chan and Louie Giglio himself.
With a large increase in attendees anticipated for this year, Giglio's Choice Ministries and Passion Conferences hired UK-based management company Black & White Live to oversee all production aspects of the event. To accommodate Passion 2013's demanding sound reinforcement needs, Rat Sound Systems of Camarillo, California supplied a full L-Acoustics loudspeaker system comprised of 108 K1, 96 V-Dosc, 36 Kara and 24 dV-Dosc elements, 40 SB28 sub enclosures, and 31 LA-Rak amplifier racks.
Engineers Jeff Sandstrom and Stephen Bailey mixed front-of-house sound at Passion 2013 using Avid Venue consoles (two Profile consoles at FOH and one at Broadcast) using the Waves Mercury and Studio Classics Collection bundles of DSP plug-ins.
Aside from the live music, the event was also streamed live and recorded for a live album, and Waves tools we used on those mixes as well.
Sandstrom, who has worked as FOH for Chris Tomlin, Passion City Church, Israel Houghton and New Breed, states, “Thanks to Waves for supporting my work at Passion 2013. Waves LoAir enabled me to get great separation between the kick drum and the bass guitar, despite being in a huge space like the Georgia Dome. The ability to dial in those low frequencies really helped add clarity and definition to the bottom of my mix. Also, Vocal Rider was an ideal solution in an environment where several worship leaders sing at the same time, and back off their mic's frequently, allowing the audience to take over. Vocal Rider takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for me, helping to automate some of those fader moves, so I can concentrate on the main vocal.”
The conference's production design was most dramatically expressed by a commanding circular stage at the center of the Georgia Dome. The massive stage was outlined with concentric circles of pixel-controlled LEDs, which glowed, chased, changed colors and even displayed video content, providing great visual interest and a sense of scale to the large custom stage.
Measuring 136 feet in diameter at its outer runway and 63 feet in diameter in its center circle, the stage was supplied by Accurate Staging of Nashville, Tennessee and engineered by Freed Sales Inc. of Miami, Florida. The border of light was created with Flex Pixel Tape from Elation Professional, a flexible LED tape that contains 72 tri-color RGB SMD LED pixels per strip.
A total of more than 1,600 feet of Elation Flex Pixel Tape was used to outline the stage, about 850 feet of it on the outer runway and the rest on the central rings. “We had tape on every edge of the stage,” says Passion lighting designer Ed White. “There are basically four concentric rings of tape, with extra sections for the ramps and pit entrances.”
White explains how the LED-edged stage came about: “The stage design was largely dictated by the fact we were doing a stadium in the round. . . The nature of each session meant that we wanted to connect everyone in the room into the same experience, so curves and runways were the way to go. . . A happy accident occurred when we came up with the final revision of the stage design – from above it looked identical to the Passion logo. Because of this, and the unique shape and contours of the stage, we decided to highlight the edges with an LED product.” Credit for the stage and LED edge should go to Passion Conferences Production Manager Jonathan Sheehan, adds White.
Elation Flex Pixel Tape was selected for the job “after looking through various options, solid block color products and other video-capable products,” says White. “Elation Flex Pixel Tape was chosen for a combination of its output, viewing angle, ability to control each pixel separately, and its competitive pricing. Another key factor for us was that the tape is flexible in both the horizontal and vertical planes, as we had to bend it around lots of curves.”
Furthermore, Elation and its sister company Acclaim Lighting could provide a one-stop source for all the gear needed to make the concept of a pixel-controlled LED-bordered stage a reality. Along with the Flex Pixel Tape, the following products were used to implement the design: 10 X Acclaim Al-Net 8 ArtNet distros; 9,500 feet (almost 2 miles) of Elation Accu DMX cable; 78 x Flex Pixel DMX drivers; 1 x Madrix Neo (used as a DMX input from the main lighting console); 1 x Madrix Pro 64 universe key; 1 x Madrix Basic 16 universe key.
“My lighting console controlled Madrix at front of house, over DMX, which effectively generated or played back video content, and pixel-mapped it to 77 universes of ArtNet,” explains White. “The ArtNet was then distributed into the rack of Al-Net 8 units under the stage, which output 77 universes of DMX, which ran to 2 x 10' Flex Pixel Tapes each. Two tapes ran from one PSU/controller, and took in just under one full universe of data.”
This setup provided him with great flexibility as a designer, White says. “We actually used only a fraction of what was possible for each session. Sometimes I treated the stage as one block of color, to frame it; other times we ran patterns or video through it for shimmering and swirling effects. We had the pixels mapped into separate sections in the Madrix server, so we had separate control over the different parts of the stage – the runways, bridges and center circles, for example.”
"Last year's Passion Conference attracted 42,000 students, so the Georgia Dome was set up in a half-house, end-stage configuration," says Rat Sound's Jon Monson. "This year, however, over 65,000 students attended, so everything was mapped out from the start as a full 360-degree, in-the-round event."
The main PA consisted of eight L-Acoustics K1 arrays--six with 14 enclosures, and two with 12--flown above the circular stage area, each paired with either three or six Kara cabinets below for down-fill. Three LA-Raks were additionally positioned on the K-Bump rigging bar above each of the arrays to maximize floor space down below.
For low-end reinforcement, 40 SB28 subwoofers were evenly distributed in groups of four around the outer ring of the stage and powered by 10 LA8.
On stage, LA8-powered 115XT HiQ wedges paired with SB18 subs served as monitors, while six tiny KIVA and ten larger dV-Doscs were deployed as front-fills on the outer and inner rings, respectively.
For delay, Rat Sound flew a ring of a dozen eight-box V-Dosc arrays powered by LA Series amplifiers to address the Dome's upper seating areas.
According to Rat Crew Chief Ron Kimball, one of the primary challenges coming into this event was that the Georgia Dome was hosting an Atlanta Falcons game on December 30 and the college football Chick-Fil-A bowl on December 31, which meant that load-in couldn't begin until 1:00 a.m. on January 1--the first day of Passion 2013. With that in mind, the team did an initial load-in and production rehearsal from December 6 through 11, after which they struck and stored the entire system until January 1st.
"When we started re-loading the system back in, we knew we were up against the clock at all times," Kimball notes. "There were only 16 hours until the doors opened and all of the various departments--staging, rigging, lighting, video and so on--certainly had their work cut out for them. But knowing how easy the L-Acoustics system would fly--especially with the flown amp racks, which eliminated long speaker cable runs--I told production that they would not be waiting on audio, and they didn't."
When the doors finally opened later that day and the PA roared to life, the sound and coverage were superb--exactly as Rat System Engineer Dan Bowers' Soundvision model had predicted and the rehearsal three weeks prior had confirmed.
"We had lots of kids coming up to front-of-house saying how great it sounded, and the Rat Sound tweet vine got loads of good comments," recalls Andrew Gilchrist, Rat's key PA tech. "But, most important of all, despite the acoustical and timeline challenges, the client seemed happier than ever, which was fantastic."
For more details on Passion Conferences, visit www.268generation.com
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