25 YEARS LATER

After the iconic 2000 Sydney Olympics, The P.A. People’s Event Communications team continue the legacy of Australia’s greatest sporting event.

The 2000 Olympics left a significant legacy within the Australian event industry, not the least of which can be found within The P.A. People, a leading solutions provider of event communications worldwide.

The P.A. People delivered many production and installation services for the Sydney Olympic Games, including the communications system for the opening and closing ceremonies, the majority of the intercom systems for sports presentation at the competition venues, permanent sound systems for the Olympic Stadium, several venues at the RAS showgrounds, and the Velodrome and the Tennis Centre, along with all the non-competition venue overlay sound and vision systems.

Fast forward 25 years, and The P.A. People are still the leading supplier of event communications systems in the southern hemisphere.

The P.A. People is one of the few major contractors worldwide who provide wired production intercom, two-way radios, wireless full duplex comms, CCTV and stage surveillance systems, theatrical cue lights, video transport, and audio systems to support the production of major sporting events. The team work on major events like the ceremonies for Olympic and Paralympic Games and their many feeder events such as the Asian, Pan American and European Games. The Event Comms team are also involved in the provision of audio and comms systems for many sporting, corporate and cultural events and ceremonies not only here in Australia but also in many overseas locations.

So what is event communications? From our perspective it is the provision of communications systems in the broadest possible sense. Seamless communications within the production team allows the participants to send and receive information that facilitates the execution of their job efficiently, easily and effectively using multiple mediums including voice, text, and visual cues. We facilitate communications between the production team, ensuring everyone gets their cue when and where they need it, the producers in multiple countries for a multi- venue annual general meeting, and mass cast members and their choreographer and director.

By its very nature, the provision of a comms system is being executed at its very best when no one even acknowledges that it exists.

When the comms system has been designed effectively and is working optimally it should be transparent. People should be able to do their job without impediment. But when it is not done correctly, everyone is quick to complain.

These days, communications comprise many separate parts to achieve our goals: wired and wireless intercoms, CCTV systems, two way radios, cue light systems, and mobile devices.

Historically, the core of most communications systems is wired intercom. Depending on the scale of the event this could either be an analog party line system, a digital networked HelixNet system from Clear-Com, or possibly an Eclipse Matrix Intercom.

After the wired intercom system, we would typically look at adding a full duplex intercom such as FreeSpeak II and/or an integrated two-way radio package. Recently, fully integrated solutions such as Clear-Com’s Arcadia can make the integration of wired and wireless systems seamless. Arcadia supports digital and analog party line, matrix style intercom panels, FreeSpeak, GPIO and 4-wire integration for two way radios and a 64 port Dante interface.

The P.A. People pride ourselves on the level of RF engineering that we apply to these larger projects which can typically involve more than 80 radio channels and well over 100 radio frequencies to coordinate.

Apart from the typical wired and wireless headset comms systems and fully integrated two-way radio systems, the P.A. People also provide a number of other systems to facilitate communications for the production team. One sub system that is growing in its popularity is the use of CCTV for both stage management and security.

Another common feature of a contemporary communications system is the use of an IP network as the overarching backbone to the project. All our comms systems are delivered over a large Ethernet network. Events such as the ceremonies for UAE National Day, the AF1GP, Sydney’s New Years Eve and the Vivid Sydney festival all deploy significant networks to support the event.

“Our philosophy is to create a network environment first, and to deliver and connect all of our comms elements over that backbone, including the matrix intercom system, matrix key stations and partyline beltpacks, CCTV cameras and viewers, timecode displays, cue lights, noise monitoring, file and print services, and audio. Not only do we deploy our services across the network, but we also monitor almost all our sub systems using IP and SNMP technology, from the radio bases to the UPS’s and everything in between,” commented Nicky Dodds, Event Communications Manager at The P.A. People.

The P.A. People also have an enviable inventory of audio systems and equipment with a specific focus on large-scale sporting and special events. Loudspeaker solutions range from Bose Professional ShowMatch arena scale line arrays, through point and shoot coaxial cabinets from Community and Celco, JBL specialist column speakers, to literally hundreds of music horns. Their inventory includes 44M series amplifiers from Linea Research, while consoles are Dante enabled Yamaha models from Rivage PM5 down though the new DM7 and QL series.

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Main Pic: UAE National Day 50 – 2021 – control desk view