Hannah Montana - Mobile Production Pro

The cubes were able to fly up out of sitefor the opening act. But that’s not allthe flying they did. During the show, thethree upstage cubes hung vertically andthe two downstage units flew verticallyand horizontally. The images that werepresented on the cubes were a blend ofcontent video designed by Tour productionDesigner Michael Cotton andIMAG.Such was the case for the V9 as well. Butwhen the cubes were flown into position,they were quasi translucent. Because theMiPIX was made up of strips of theproduct, you could see through the cubesto what was happening behind them onthe V9 walls. The effect was increasedwhen the cubes were on the move.The lighting design, done by AbbyRosen Holmes (Martina McBride amongmany other great works) and operatedby Susanne Sasic, was a beautiful blendof theatrical and concert production influence. The lightingcolor pallet showed the whimsical colors that one wouldexpect to see in a Disney show to deep saturated looks thathave defined rock stages for years. In addition to the gearthat was up in the main rig, the design made great use ofthree offstage torms on each side.Additionally, four of the video cubes had six VL-3000 Spotshung from the their bottom frame work and the fifth one,which was smaller than the others had to be able to actuallyland on the stage, which precluded the placement of lightingunder it.One would be hard pressed to come up with anyone whowould say that they had a difficult position on this gig. Thatbeing said, it’s tough to stand in the arena during this showand not feel a twinge of sympathy for FOH engineer SimonWelch. The place is full of thousands of screaming little girls.Welch explained, “It’s a bit of a balancing act. You wantto let the audience have the effect of a big loud rock show,but you don’t want thousands of mothers filing by the deskat the end of the night asking why you tried to deafen theirchildren.”During the time when the children were not putting out fullvolume, the mix was great. But when they cranked it all theway up, it didn’t really matter how hard Welch tried, therewasn’t much chance of finding the high end in his mix.That’s got to make for a hard night.26 Tour Guide Journal