dBS Solutions where this year asked to design and supply the sound for the annual pantomime for accountancy giant Price Waterhouse Coopers. The organisation have a history going back twenty eight years of organising and performing pantomimes for children. Their shows have in the past been broadcast to hospital childrens wards and cinemas up and down the country and are performed at the Peacock theatre, Sadlers Wells West end home. Price Waterhouse Cooper staff feature in every roll within the production from cast, orchestra to stage management, props and costume.
This years production of Cinderella played at both the Peacock and Edinburgh Kings theatre. The shows Lighting designer and Production adviser David Clair asked dBS Solutions director Christopher Bogg to get involved back in October. When looking for a company to take the show on, dBS Solutions were Davids first choice.
“The show is not without its Technical challenges” says Christopher. The get in and set up times in London are limited as the venue is in use during the day. Couple this with the shows size and the need for record feeds to an OB truck and we have a complex technical production to load in and tech in a just few days. dBS Solutions prepared as much of the project as we could from our warehouse in Warrington before shipping equipment off to London. This included designing custom built racks for the stage to house amps, radio mics and vital comms equipment. Our Midas sound console was preprogrammed in our unit over the days before the load in from rehearsal notes to ensure every moment within the venue was used wisely.
The system consisted of a selection of Mics from Sennheiser, Shure, Robe, and AKG in the pit with spot monitoring on stands from Yamaha MSP3s and 5s. Radio mics where our Sennheiser Evolution 500 series with WSM software so that our sound operators could monitor the mics progress from both stage and front of house. Other monitoring both on stage and in the pit was provided by Ohm TRS112s and BR6s. The system in London was a house d&b system whilst in Edinburgh was a Meyer UPA system of which we added some of our subsonic speakers from hire stock. Processing was from XTA electronics with Midas Pro 2 series console.
dBS also arranged logistics to London and return from Edinburgh for both audio and lighting along with the local supply of an active splitter system for the record feeds for London. The show was a great success with many cast and creatives commenting of the audio quality. dBS Solutions would like thank lighting designer David Clair, production engineer Matt Wharton, Deputy head of sound Tara Kent, and Sound assistant Kiran Sondhi for all their hard work over the shows run.