Production Works is Now a Yamaha Dealer

A Magical Transformation
for Blundstone's Farewell Party

Southern Roots Festival
Hobart Showgrounds - Easter 2007

Located at the southern end of Tasmania, an island some 300miles south of the Australian mainland, Hobart is one of the world's southern-most cities, so it came as no surprise that the new music festival staged there over the 2007 Easter weekend should be called Southern Roots. Drawing such artists as Wolfmother, Lemon Heads, Ben Kweller, The Pixies, Gomez and Toni Collete, who had recently performed at Australia's first V Festival and the well established Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival, the show was a breath of fresh autumn air for the music fans of Tasmania.

For this festival Production Works were tasked with providing a complete turnkey production on the arena at the Royal Hobart Showgrounds, The package ranged all the way from a complete roofed main stage with loading docks and a second undercover stage, through PA, monitors and lighting, to full backline for multiple bands and production communications.

Both stages were almost entirely kitted out with gear from the Electrovoice family. Mixing consoles were an all-Midas affair. The mainstage FOH was mixed on a Midas XL200 with an XL250 for monitors, while on the smaller indoor stage, a Verona 400 mixed FOH and a Sienna 400 took care of monitors.

The Mainstage FOH system for the audience of 12,000 comprised 30 x XLC compact line array boxes and 16 x XLine subs, with XW15 monitor wedges, XArray side fills and four Mongoose boxes for drum monitors. Everything was powered by P3000 amplifiers. The indoor stage FOH for an audience of 1,500 was a large Dynacord Cobra system, with EV monitors and a Dynacord Madras system as side fill. All equalization and speaker control on both stages was handled by gear from Klark Teknik.

The XLC system acquitted itself flawlessly, cruising its way through ten bands during the 12 hour gig without even raising a sweat. Although Production Works is already very impressed with the excellent performance of their XLC system, they are looking forward to upgrading their cabinets to the improved DVX specification.

In addition to the Ethernet- over-power local area computer network employed to track channel allocations during the high-speed Mainstage band changeovers, all voice communications were via a Telex wired beltpack system interfaced with BTR800 RadioComms.

The systems engineers from Production Works found, that without exception, the engineers who came in to mix the bands were pleased to be working on well-known and well-understood industry standard Midas consoles. Despite the availability of a digital console, in a festival environment that allowed no time for major system setups or sound checks between acts, the reliability and familiarity of the Midas analogue desks was the unanimous choice.

Production Works at Falls Festival again
for Tasmania's New Years Eve 2006

Pink October - the Tasmanian saga concludes

Parliament goes pink for Breast Cancer... the month of PINK in Tasmania (episode 3!)

Launceston goes pink for Breast Cancer... the month of PINK in Tasmania (episode 2!)

The Beginning... the month of PINK in Tasmania

Production Works brings Ground
Supported Rigging to Tasmania

High Definition Plasma Monitors
now available for hire

Lighting and Sound enhance the atmosphere at Hobart's exciting new Barilla Bay Restaurant

Production Works at Falls Festival
NYE Tasmania 2003

Wholehog PC takes wing in Hobart

Australia's first Wholehog PC system to employ the Wholehog III USB wing panels had its initial outing running a Credit Unions conference in Hobart this week. Production Works commissioned their new system for the conference only hours after the wings were flown into the country. Based around a Toshiba notebook computer, linked to an external LCD monitor, a Programmer wing, a Playback wing and two DMX Widgets, the system is running off one of the new generation of compact uninterruptible power supplies, to ensure that system is as at least as stable as a dedicated console.

Operator consensus (and there were plenty of them lining up to try out the new system) is that although it feels slightly strange using Wholehog III panels to run a Wholehog II, the new console is a joy to fly. Production Works decision to use an external optical mouse in conjunction with the Programming wing's integral trackball, has proved to offer the best of both worlds for operators. Everyone, especially the video crew, has been eying off the gorgeous Hercules Prophetview 720 LCD monitor, although it has been the LED desk lamps, and their capability of crossfading between white and blue, which have proved to be the most popular feature of the wing panels.

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You can also download the lighting calculations spreadsheet described in our February 2003 newsletter