Full Tilt

B S Sound PA Hire provides live sound for Jousting Knights

The brief was: supply a PA system and mics for a sports event, audience of 4,000 in two grandstands, wireless headset mics for commentators, playback music from Spotify and, if possible, amplify the action sounds. Two days at Lardner Park, near Warragul, 100 km from Melbourne.

“So what is the event?” I asked.

“Medieval Jousting”

“ You mean like battle re-enactments?” I asked.

“ No, this is a sport and we’re hosting the world championship this year.”

Now, I’m no stranger to doing sound for sport. I’ve provided systems for the Stonington Gift and Parkdale Gift, also the Sacred Heart Community Cup and, many years ago, the Melbourne Magic and Tigers basketball teams.

I did some research and jousting is quite an extraordinary extreme sport. The competitors wear a full suit of authentic armour weighing about 40 kg. They gallop towards each other along either side of a wall called a ‘Tilt’, whose main purpose is protecting the horses.

The aim is to break the lance against the opponent’s shield. The lances are made of pine, three-and-a-half metres long with a solid three-pointed steel tip designed to grab and dig into the shield. The shields are concave so the lance tip shouldn’t slide up or down towards the helmet or horse’s body.

There have been fatalities (thankfully not at this event) so this is not for the faint hearted! By the way, the expression ‘Full Tilt’ comes from this sport. The arena space, called the ‘List’ is 100 metres by 36 metres, the Tilt is about
40 metres long.

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There were various long distances between the audio components, so most connections were wireless. 12 receivers for various mics, including the shot guns from the far side, and four wireless links feeding to the speakers on the far side.

On the near side of the arena we had two digital stage boxes on Cat5 for shotguns and speakers. We had eight sets of speakers in the List, four along each side placed three metres forward of the seats and about 15 metres apart. These were RCF HD12As with RCF 905AS subs also placed at the four centre positions.

The HD12As were placed on their ‘wrong’ side, as I wanted a lift of only five or 10 degrees to face into the audience, so using the monitor angle of 45 degrees would have been way too high.

The original brief was to only cater for the grandstand seats however I added in two more small speakers pointing outwards for the “peasants” at the ends of the arena. These were QSC K10s which were sufficient for the thousand or so people who didn’t get grandstand seats.

At first I thought the impact sounds and breaking of the lances would be easy to reinforce as shotgun mics are quite sensitive to vibration and percussive noise. At many choir gigs I have been challenged by clapping and foot-stomping coming through way too loud.

However, in this outdoor environment there were no reflective surfaces to aid the acoustics. After a day of rain the ground was soggy and soft. In addition, surrounding the Tilt was truckloads of sand and tanbark, so it wasn’t possible to pick up the clip clopping of hooves even at a gallop.

With a distance of 15 metres between shotguns and Tilt I had only a slim hope of picking up the action. Yes, I did think of wireless mics on the knights, but logistically difficult of course with the metal armour, not to mention that any audible comments from the knights might not be suitable for a family friendly event.

Logical solution was to mic up the tilt with wireless omni lapels, I put this to the production manager only to be told “It’s not on!” The Tilt is disassembled and re-built twice each day to accommodate other events in the arena.

I negotiated this situation as there was no other solution and I was able to tape four lapels and belt-packs to the top of the Tilt each time it was built. I also put two belt packs and lapels under the Tilt in the hope of getting some galloping, but despite the very close proximity there was absolutely nothing as the ground was so soft.

Despite being warned not to put anything on the Tilt, I had confidence that the Sennheiser EW100 belt-packs would cope with any impacts, and they did. Two went flying on separate occasions but were retrieved with no damage.

We did have one lapel mic destroyed but no big deal as it was a very low strike rate, and I budgeted on losing four. These were the very affordable Optim Umic CB-100, and despite their low price they have a flat response, clear sound, and can handle SPL of 135 dB.

These Tilt mics were delayed by 38 ms as the speakers were 15 metres closer to the audience. In my experience it is an unusual situation where delays are applied to mics rather than speakers.

As well as jousting, there were battle re-enactments, a parade, and a birds of prey demo, which is why the Tilt was removed and re-built twice a day. As we wanted the battle sounds, and the omni mics were removed from the Tilt at arena center, this now depended on the shotguns, which were Rode NTG2s mounted on banquet stand.

I ran the PA speakers in four zones and assigned the shotguns to speakers that were further away, so four sets of speakers assigned R, L, R, L. Shotguns placed near the center L speaker panned hard right, shotguns near the center R speaker panned hard left.

“Brilliant” I thought, each mic is effectively deaf to the nearer speaker, and 15 metres away from the speaker it is feeding, what could possibly go wrong? I thought I had avoided the basic two part microphone – speaker feedback loop, but they still resonated well before I got any acceptable level!

Turns out there was still a feedback loop but in four parts; mic – speaker – mic – speaker. How frustrating. It was fortunate that we had a practice run the day before. I then moved the mics further away from the speakers and used a more savage LPF resulting in more clashing but less bashing.

A final challenge on the set-up day was being told about the musicians, the medieval band ‘Wayward’. Sound for live music is my expertise and in my comfort zone but not a pleasant surprise when it isn’t in the brief and I haven’t planned for it in my mix set up.

I really dodged a few bullets here.

“We thought we’d put them over there…” said the promoter pointing to a space 50 meters away, (no, I didn’t bring a spare multicore), “…but now they’ll be sharing the AV tent with you ‘cos the weather is dodgy.”

Luckily I had my decent enclosed-ear headphones, but super lucky that I had kept my band mic kit in the van. I then realised that I had very few local inputs left on the mixer.

The Behringer X32 mixer and S16 stage boxes take channels in banks of eight, so 16 inputs had been assigned to Cat5 for the sake of four shotguns. The remaining 16 local inputs had 12 wireless receivers leaving only four spare inputs. Last bullet dodged; four musicians with one instrument each; hurdy-gurdy, wood flute, bag pipes, and drum.

“Do any of you sing?” I asked with trepidation.

“Oh yes… (my heart sank) …but not at this event.”

Thank goodness, and so I happily set up four dynamic mics for their instruments at no extra charge.

Finally, this was one of the more interesting problems and solutions; commentary for the battle scenes came from the field. One of the Vikings wore a wireless headset, he also wore real chain-mail armor from neck to knees! What can you do?

Fortunately, he wore a reasonably conventional belt, so the transmitter was outside the armour on his right hip. Should work just fine, I thought.

Turns out I thought wrong as his voice cut out each time his left side faced AV-land as then there would be two layers of metal as well as his body between transmitter and receiver.

We had much better results the following day by mounting the belt-pack on the back of his collar, thus getting it just above the chain-mail, an obvious solution in hindsight. The headset mics were Audac CMX726 from Audio Logistics, lightweight and with a very full and clear sound.

We also provided other aspects of production at this event; two PA systems for the Tavern (Shakespeare and music performances) and the Trebuchet (like a catapult but different, flinging watermelons onto a distant hill), decorative lighting for a row of trees stretching 200 metres between the encampment and the tavern, and more lighting for the exterior and interior of the Tavern.

These were mostly set up by my assistant Tim Marmach, who overcame a set of other challenges along the way. Perhaps this could fill another story.

Client: World Jousting Championship

Event Producer: Andrew McKinnon

Production Manager: Josh Green – Team Phoenix Events

Mark Barry owns and operates B S Sound PA Hire in Melbourne and is happy to go anywhere to work for anyone, he can be contacted at mark@bssound.com.au

CX Magazine – August 2020   

LIGHTING  |  AUDIO  |  VIDEO  |  STAGING  |  INTEGRATION

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