Green Hippo

Hippotizers Drive T4 on the Beach once again despite natures best efforts!

Hippotizers Drive T4 on the Beach once again despite natures best efforts!

Reliability is a word we like at Green Hippo. It isn’t a word used quite so often in relation to the British weather! So when Nigel Sadler visited the setup at Channel 4’s T4 On The Beach event in July of this year he encountered 4 seasons in one day! 

The live TV show caters for the current pop market and had an impressive line-up of chart-topping artists including Basement Jaxx, Florence and The Machine, Tinchy Strider, Calvin Harris and Dizzy Rascal and not surprisingly takes place on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare on England's west coast.  Although live transmission began at midday, there were many other acts running prior to this time to warm up the huge crowds.

As has been the case for several years now, all stage media was handled by Green Hippo’s oldest friends Digital Insanity. Richard ‘RB’ Bagshaw and Kate Perring were already knee deep in media when Nigel arrived. A couple of hours later the team were knee deep in water as the heavens opened and continued to do so intermittently for the entire weekend!  “You can always count on the British weather throwing the unexpected at you!” says RB.  “Even the Met Office had question marks next to the weather forecast.  We’re familiar enough with this event for the technical issues to be a known quantity but placing your equipment on a British beach next to the Atlantic will always be a lottery!”

The stage comprised 4 vertical strips of Mitsubishi OD10. This year the team decided to go digital all the way.  The outputs of 2 Hippotizer HD servers fed 1024x768 media into an Edirol V440 mixer. A front of house matrix allowed local switching of all the live camera feeds to be used as a source on the Hippotizers via SDI input cards.  RB and Kate wanted to keep a live feel to the event but needed to create different looks for each band. Including the off air artists a total of 48 different looks were needed.  So pre-programmed timelines were used to load all the relevant media for individual acts but live layer level control and effects manipulation was done via a pair of Behringer BCF2000 midi consoles. 

Main equipment suppliers were Creative Technology and production was by Done and Dusted. “This year's show was easier than ever from a technical perspective” says Nigel Sadler. “The combination of pre-planning by Digital Insanity and great teamwork with those onsite meant a technically smooth show with a consistently strong look. If only I could say the same for the weather. Normally I’m needed to do technical tasks. This year my main job was to gaffa-tape the ever emerging holes that the wind was ripping in the Front of House tower and stop the monsoon-like rain from pouring in!”

More info at www.digitalinsanity.co.uk and www.channel4.com/t4onthebeach

Photos by Nigel Sadler