Case studyTouring  ·  comedy

Paul Smith: HAPPY Tour 2024/25

Camera systems, operators and PPUs driving the IMAG screens across Paul Smith’s 60-date HAPPY Tour 2024/25 with UK Events Group. Eighteen venues, from The O2 to the OVO Hydro, with the same three-camera rig and the same look every night.

Client

UK Events Group

Sector

Touring, comedy

Services

IMAG, camera systems, operators, PPU supply

Scale

60 dates, 18 arena venues

Rig

Three cameras, Blackmagic Studio 6K

The brief

UK Events Group brought dwmedia onto Paul Smith’s HAPPY Tour 2024/25 to supply the camera systems, operators and PPUs feeding the IMAG screens.

The tour ran to 60 dates across 18 venues, including The O2 and OVO Arena Wembley in London, the AO Arena in Manchester, the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Utilita Arena venues in Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle and Cardiff, and smaller rooms at Connexin Live in Hull, Derby Arena and Swansea Building Society Arena.

What made it challenging

The technical spec was not the challenge. Three cameras into a PPU feeding screens is a rig we build regularly.

The challenge was doing it sixty times.

An arena audience is watching the screens more than the stage. In a room holding 12,000 people, most of them are far enough back that the performer is a figure and the screen is the show. If the shot is loose, or the cut is late, or the framing sits differently tonight to last night, the audience notices even if they could not tell you why.

Every arena on that list is a different room. Rigging positions differ. Camera platform locations differ. Throw distances to the screens differ. Sightlines differ. What works at the O2 does not transfer unaltered to the Brighton Centre. A rig that depends on a specific position being available breaks the first time a venue cannot give you it.

So the job is not building a three-camera IMAG rig. It is building one that produces the same result in eighteen different rooms, without a redesign in each, and without the audience in Aberdeen getting a worse show than the audience in London.

That means camera positions chosen for what every venue can offer rather than what the best venue can. Operators who know the show well enough to anticipate rather than react, because on night forty the timing has to be as sharp as it was on night one. And a load-in that works to the tour schedule rather than needing the tour to work around it.

What was deployed

• ·Blackmagic Studio 6K cameras with operators
• ·PPU for live vision mixing on site
• ·Feeds direct to the venue IMAG screens

The same specification travelled the full tour, so the show looked consistent from the first date to the sixtieth.

The venues

England

The O2 Arena  ·  OVO Arena Wembley  ·  AO Arena  ·  Utilita Arena Birmingham  ·  Utilita Arena Sheffield  ·  Utilita Arena Newcastle  ·  Motorpoint Arena Nottingham  ·  M&S Bank Arena  ·  First Direct Arena  ·  Coventry Building Society Arena  ·  Brighton Centre  ·  Bournemouth International Centre  ·  Connexin Live  ·  Derby Arena

Scotland

OVO Hydro  ·  P&J Live

Wales

Utilita Arena Cardiff  ·  Swansea Building Society Arena

The result

Sixty dates delivered across eighteen venues, from The O2 down to rooms a fraction of its size. dwmedia has worked in 18 UK arenas, including The O2, AO Arena Manchester, OVO Arena Wembley and the OVO Hydro.

We deliver two further arena tours each year which we are not able to name.