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Fleetwood Mobiles Turns The Volume Knob Up To 11 At Download
Castle Donington in the East Midlands was transformed into a site of pilgrimage for Metal fans over the weekend of June 9th-11th as thousands descended on Donington racetrack for the annual Download music festival.
Among those making the journey up the M1 was Fleetwood Mobiles, which was commissioned by Live Nation, the company responsible for producing an International Best of Download television programme, which was broadcast in the UK by Channel 4 and Kerrang! TV.
Download, which grew out of two other events (Monsters of Rock and Ozfest), is an annual event that plays host to the biggest names in Metal. Among the 28 bands taking the stage this year were Tool, Metallica, Guns n Roses, Korn and Alice In Chains.
“We recorded everything as live, even though it wasn’t being broadcast until the following weekend,” says Fleetwood director Tim Summerhayes. “For this event we took Fleetwood One, our 96K Euphonix truck, which was parked at the rear of the stage. The fact that we were only 50 meters from what has to be one of the biggest sub bass units I’ve ever seen did make monitoring tricky, but we stuck on our headphones and, in best Spinal Tap tradition, turned the knobs up to 11 and everything was fine.”
In the high pressure environment of a live rock festival, Fleetwood always encourages the broadcaster not to transmit the first song of each band’s set.
“It helps if we use that one as a soundcheck and line check so we can get the mix going,” says Summerhayes. “Obviously there are times when the band wants to open with a new single – we had that experience recently with Placebo in Frankfurt – so in those situations we do a quick re-mix later to ensure that the sound is as good as it should be.”
Mike Kaufman, head of TV development for Live Nation, Europe, says working with Fleetwood made it much easier for his company when it came to securing broadcast clearances from the artists’ managers.
“Heavy Rock bands have exceptionally high standards when it comes to audio quality and they will not allow you to broadcast anything that doesn’t sound good. With Fleetwood on board handing the audio, we knew we wouldn’t have this problem because they have so much experience – and so much understanding of the genre – that they are more than capable of delivering the quality these bands expect.”
Kaufman adds that the programme was recorded and mixed in both stereo and 5.1 for High Definition broadcast.
“Fleetwood did a fantastic job,” he says. “Concerts like Download are always complex because you have such a wide variety of bands involved, but everything went very smoothly and we were really pleased with the results.”
19th June 2006
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