NEWS
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Doha and the Desert Lords of Rock (DLR)

Like Sinbad the sailor before us, Norwest Productions Big Events Crew headed out into the shimmering desert sands to find the mysterious land of Qatar, or at least try and do a gig there. With 25 crew and 40 tonnes of equipment we left the shores of Australia and made our way to Qatar, a small country which juts out into the Persian Gulf.

With climate conditions rarely experienced in Australia, over 40 degrees and 90 percent humidity everyday, installing was done during the cooler periods of the day, 5pm till 2am. This continued for a long month, with optical fibre and analogue networksdistributing and collecting signal from all points of the stadium and beyond. Front ofHouse position was custom built to accommodate FOH, monitors, replay and a mountain of control equipment and laptops………..so many laptops.

Good organisation and a little bit of luck helped our freight arrive on time enabling audio installation to start on time and be completed in the suggested time frame.

Some freighting delays to other parts if the production caused delays in the rehearsals
giving us extra time to fine tune and tweak the systems and also enabling crew to have a
well deserved break and rest before the month of rehearsals about to start.

It was during the period we ventured out into the very empty expanses of Qatar’s southern desert and towards the Saudi Arabian border. With fueled 4WD’s we went round, down and sometimes sideways across the sand dunes and onto our camp for the evening of local delights. The next month saw lots of rehearsals occurring in the stadium and with lots of time to make up due to previous delays, rehearsals went day and night. This required crew to be split up into a day and night crew with long days a standard. It takes a special group of dedicated and talented people to be able to live and work together on an event like this for such a long time and still be able to be best friends of an evening around the dinner table.

After a month of installation, a month of rehearsals including six full dress rehearsals, the 1st of December and the Opening Ceremony had arrived. Qatar normally receives 70mm of rainfall in a year; Doha had 70mm of rain in the 24 hour period leading up to, during and after the ceremony. Unfortunately, some flying elements of the show had to be cut due to high winds in the stadium, but the show went on. People sang, people danced and horses pranced and even though the skies opened up not one person had left the stadium and the people of Doha and Qatar were treated to a show they will probably never forget.

With the ceremony completed and our speaker system put away in the dry it was a handover to our sporting colleges to do their show whilst we had a rest and recovered from flues and colds contracted in the rain.

In most closing ceremonies in the past it has been a more relaxed, party atmosphere. This was no normal show, Doha closing ceremony was going to be one of the most spectacular closing ceremonies ever produced and in most cases could have been quite easily been the opening ceremony given the complexity.

In the space of 48 hours the field of play speaker systems and stage systems were redeployed into positions, tested and setup for one last rehearsal. Grey storm clouds over head, the crowd made their way into the stadium and with the blessing of Allah, the rain held off and one of the most magical ceremonies went without a hitch. After months of install and rehearsals and Christmas looming, it took 5 days for a motivated crew to have all the equipment packed up, bumped out and back in the shipping containers for their return journey.

With some of the latest equipment available operated by talented technicians, Doha and the Asian Games can definitely be claimed as a big success for Norwest Productions.

The Desert Lords of Rock consisted of:
Audio Director – Bruce “BJ” Jackson
Audio Designer – Scott “Swa” Willsallen
Audio Production Manager – Ian “Baldy” Baldwin
Project Manager – Adrian “The Riddler” Riddell
FOH Engineer – Ian “Shappy” Shapcott
Monitor Engineer – Ewan “E Dog” McDonald
Senior Systems Engineer – Ian “Coops” Cooper
Optocore Insurance Policy – Marc “The Big Man” Wesler
FOH Systems Engineer – Amy “Mrs Mac” McDonald
FOH Systems Engineer – Ricki “Cookie” Cook
RF Systems Engineer – Matt “Blinga” Ling
RF Systems Engineer – Steve “Action Man” Caldwell
RF Systems Engineer – Peter “The Tweater” Twartz
Replay Engineer – Trevor “The Tractor” Beck
Sound Designer – Steve “Loogs” Logan
Crew Chief – Antonio “The Calvinator” Calvi
FOP Systems Technician – Chris “Tomato” Martin
FOP Systems Technician – Ryan “Tweety” Twitty
Eastern Stage Technician – Lachlan “The Lighting/Audio Guy” Conquer
Western Stage Technician – Raoul “The Plumber” Plimer
In Ear Monitor Distribution Manager – Martin “Marty” Tyrell
Level 1 IEM Assist – Simon “Macca” McNamara
Level 2 IEM Manager – Aiman “Good Bloke” Elbob
Level 2 IEM Assist – Chris “Little Chris” Hampton
FM IEM Distribution Manager – Kylie “Espanol” Sanz
FM IEM Assist – Nathan “Shaggy” Anic
IEM Assistant – Rachel “Ray” Caldwell
DLR’s Replay Engineer – Trevor “Time code Controller” Beck

We would also like to thank our Australian Crew, who without their help this would
never have been possible, work lads.

Khalifa Stadium Audio System Breakdown
FOH Speakers – 120 L-acoustics Kudo, 24 Adamson Y-10’s and 30 EAW BH760’s
Back of House paging speakers – 155
Crew used – 25
Amplifiers – 132 - 22 racks of 6 Lab Gruppen FP6400
FOH Consoles – 2 Yamaha PM1D’s
Monitor Consoles – 2 Yamaha PM5D’s
Optocore Nodes – 14 spread over 3 networks
Fibre Optic Cable – 6kms of tactical 4 core fibre optic cable
System Processing – 8 Dolby Lake 4/12’s, 2 Dolby Lake 8/8’s, 7 Contours and 7 Mesas
Laptops Used – 14
Back Up Analogue Cable – 8kms of 20 pair
Speaker Cable Used – 3.2kms
Shipping Containers Used - 2 40ft and 1 20ft
Camels Spotted – 8
Hours spent waiting for Automation - ?????????

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