News

11 Jun 2020

Light to Unite

Photos: deanecohen@xtra.co.nz

On May 22, 2020, the combined forces of NW Group brands Spyglass and Oceania, event producer Pak Peacocke of The Show Business, structural company Camelspace, NEP Broadcast, musician Stan Walker, and a host of others, staged Light to Unite, a one-off free performance set against the backdrop of Auckland’s iconic Silo Park. Broadcast live on Seven Sharp, the event was a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to NZ’s ‘team of 5 million’ united in the fight against Covid-19, while raising money for MusicHelps, a charity set up to support the live performance industry.   

“At the start of May, when it was starting to feel like there really was no end in sight, and Covid-19 had just devastated what up until a few short weeks earlier had been my really bustling and vibrant business, I decided I needed something positive to work towards, and came up with the idea that eventually became Light to Unite,” says Matt Jones, CEO of NW Group NZ. “The essence of the idea was this: create some positivity and purpose for the people of NW Group by staging a challenging gig with a great story behind it. Bring some of the event industry suppliers together, who we usually see all the time but hadn’t seen for weeks, to projection map a cool structure with positive images of NZ’s successful fight against Covid-19 and say thank-you to not only all the essential workers, but also the ‘team of 5 million who all sacrificed something’. It was also to raise awareness of the plight our industry is facing, which we all know, but not the wider public. And finally, raise awareness, and hopefully some money, for MusicHelps, a well-being service that is doing some great work across our industry.”

“While I knew NW Group, through our Spyglass and Oceania brands in NZ, had all the resources to deliver the projection, lighting, audio and content required, I turned to Pak Peacocke of The Show Business to see if he would jump on board and actually bring the very rough concept I had outlined alive and help me get the various partners we would need together. We’ve worked with Pak for decades and he has great mana in our industry in NZ. He has been involved in most of NZ’s large scale outdoor public events and works closely with Oceania’s GM of Lighting Simon Garrett, regularly. I talked Pak (and Simon) through my idea on a Friday afternoon, and Pak said “let me think about it.”

“On Saturday morning I was still lying in bed when I got a call, and Pak and Simon had transformed my very rough idea into what you eventually saw on the Seven Sharp segment; a beautiful and highly poignant moment thanks to Stan Walker, Pak, the directorship of Nigel Carpenter, amazing projection and content by Spyglass, sound and lighting by Oceania and the broadcast recording capabilities of NEP and Ariel Drones, all aired on Seven Sharp, one of NZ’s highest rating TV News programmes. Of course, that is not everyone that contributed, but we have acknowledged everyone in a credit roll at the end of the video. I am incredibly grateful to everyone that jumped on board this project and donated their time, energy, and equipment for free.”

“The projection and performance by Stan Walker was a gift from the event supply industry and Stan to the front-line workers and the ‘team of 5 million’, to say thank you,” echoes Pak Peacocke. “Everyone who put together the show did so for free. The events industry has been really hard hit by Covid-19 and cancellation of events right across NZ; it’s not just the artists themselves, it’s the event promoters, producers, the suppliers, the caterers, the sound, lighting and video techs, the camera ops, stage hands, the ushers. It’s an industry that has a lot of casual workers and it’s an industry that already had a real problem with mental well-being.”

MusicHelps is an organisation that provides wellbeing services and hardship grants for people in the music and events community. You can support them by texting MUSIC to 2448 to donate $3 or jump on the website musichelps.org.nz/musichelpslive

“The location for the shoot and projection was Silo Park,” continues Matt Jones. “The event was the first time that the Silo towers had been fully projection mapped, and they looked absolutely spectacular. The stunning (albeit freezing cold) Auckland night in late May just topped it off. Over the years we’ve done a number of events both within and onto the towers, but it was a special opportunity to see them fully mapped. Hopefully one day when this Covid-19 mess is over we can find a client with a budget to do it all again!

“Our production team worked tirelessly from Monday’s build and rough line-up, to Tuesday’s lighting install and 2nd night line-up, with the first live night and recorded performance on Wednesday night,” relates Andy Crump, Senior Account Manager at Spyglass. “All content was put together in-house and was made from what we could find during lockdown with limited resources.”

“Vision-wise, we utilised our Christie and Panasonic projection platforms to pull off the projection onto the Silos,” continues Andy. “We projected on to all four sides of the ‘Six Pack’ Silo that was 26 metres tall, and two sides of the large single silo. We used 20 projectors in total, with a combined light output of 360,000 lumens. With a surface area of over 2600sqm we double-stacked for brightness, giving us approximately 100 lux light levels, allowing for blends and overshoot whilst dealing with the large amount of ambient light. We built six scaffold towers (thanks Camelspace!) that had their own media server and projector control all linked via a fibre backbone.”

Matt Jones and his wife Lou pitched in with catering and morale-boosting support; “I’m not a technical guy, and have to spend far more time in the office than on gigs, so for me it was a pleasure to be out on site, particularly after a couple of months dealing with a business going through the logistical challenges of a lockdown that suddenly had no revenue for the last two months. None of my guys would actually trust me touching or installing our equipment of course, so me and my wife Lou sorted all the catering and made sure everyone got fed and watered instead. My poor coffee machine will never be quite the same. Perhaps the best part of the gig, though, was watching everyone smiling and chatting, sharing a few lockdown stories, and just seeming to enjoy each other’s company out on a gig. I’m sure that will normalise once we all get back to work in the new normal, but for now, it was just good to see and be a part of.”

MusicHelps is an organisation that provides wellbeing services and hardship grants for people in the music and events community and you can support them by texting MUSIC to 2448 to donate $3 or jump on the website https://musichelps.org.nz/

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