Meyer Sound News : Sound for the Hong Kong Farewell and Handover Ceremonies

Sound for the Hong Kong Farewell and Handover Ceremonies

Written by Nick Reich (System Sound)

At midnight, on June 30th 1997, the sun finally set on one of the last outposts of the British Empire, when control of Hong Kong and its territories reverted to Chinese rule after more than 150 years. Apart from the historic significance of this event, the People of Hong Kong witnessed a week full of more entertainment and celebratory events than they are likely to see in a long time. The British, Hong Kong, and Chinese Governments, along with a large variety of wealthy business groups, all tried to out-do each other with the scale of their Handover events, many of which had been in planning for some years.

The two official Government-sponsored events for the Handover both took place on the evening of June 30th. The first, at 6:00pm, was the Sunset Farewell Concert, an outdoor production of massive scope where the people of Hong Kong officially farewelled the last British Governor, Chris Patten. This was followed, after a State Dinner, with the Handover Ceremony itself, indoors in the new extension to the Convention Centre. This was where control of Hong Kong officially changed hands, witnessed by 4000 Heads of State, Foreign Ministers, and local business leaders.

These two events were produced for the Handover Ceremony Coordination Office by Caribiner Asia Ltd, the local arm of the huge multinational business communications company, Caribiner. In light of a long record in the region, Caribiner Asia executive producer, Maureen Earls, chose John Scandrett of System Sound (Australia) to provide the sound reinforcement, along with much of the television sound requirement, for both these events. A team of seven, along with nearly twelve tons of equpiment, were duly dispatched to Hong Kong, twelve days before the event.

THE FAREWELL CONCERT

18 months ago, the venue for this event had been the British Naval docking basin. Full of water, thanks to the strongest Monsoonal rains in 50 years, the land reclaimed specifically for this event could still have been used for its original purpose. An 85m square parade ground was surrounded on three sides by temporary stands seating 10,000. The fourth side was filled with an enormous stage, 90m wide, with the harbour, and the Royal Yacht Britannia, as a backdrop. The stage featured a full size orchesta stage on either end, with a decorative curved roof structure over each. These cantilevered structures were built in the UK by Edwin Shirley Staging (ESS), and supported the main lighting rigs. One stage held the HK Philharmonic Orchestra, the other held the HK Chinese Orchestra, playing traditional Chinese instruments in a Western orchestral configuration. The space between the two stages was filled with steps to hold the 600-voice choir, with a lectern for the MCs and the ceremonial flagpoles on its upper levels. The parade ground itself was used not only for the 25 minute military band segment of the concert, but also was filled with choreographed performers for the spectacular opening and closing numbers, a format made familiar by Olympic opening ceremonies.

Five 25m high Spot Towers behind the seating stands provided the LD, Durham Marenghi, with lofty, if somewhat restricted, positions for lighting all this, however the Sound department had to get creative to cover the seating whilst staying low profile to the worldwide TV coverage. Flown clusters were rejected as too unsightly, so sound designer John Scandrett resorted to a ring of twenty Meyer MSL-4 Self-Powered Loudspeaker Systems surrounding the parade ground, firing up at the stands from the ground. These loudspeakers performed brilliantly for ten days in the foulest, wettest conditions, with only one amplifier failure when a cabinet was blown off its 1m high stand by a 30 mph wind gust. A quick re-seat of internal connectors had it up-and-running in short order. An additional three Meyer CQ type Self-Powered Loudspeaker systems were hung from the front of each of the orchestra roof structures, providing outfill, ground foldback, and foldback to the choir steps on each side. Unlike the MSL-4s on the ground, these were never weather-covered, and survived a continuous waterfall of roof run-off for most of the twelve days they were rigged, without a single fault.

Control for this event was greatly complicated by the fact that System Sound was responsible for providing not only the House sound, but also full orchestra submixes to the BBC coverage, all soloist and lectern mics, and a full mono media feed to the other 56 media organisations covering the event. The lectern used by Prince Charles and Governor Patten was also rather inconveniently located at the opposite end of the venue to the stage. This required instantaneous re-setting of the delay times to each speaker cabinet to match the location of the sound source. Mark Benson mixed the house sound from a cramped and wet control position perched at the top of one of the side stands. A Yamaha PM3500/56 console and four racks of processing, playback, and delay devices were positioned by crane on the platform to drive the system.

In a relatively dry (and air conditioned) 20' x 8' site hut behind the stage, Nick Reich created Orchestra and Choir submixes for the House sound, a similar set of submixes for the BBC's Host Broadcaster coverage, and a complete Stereo and Mono audio feed for all the other media organizations. Mixing on 48ch and 32ch PM4000 consoles, along with various smaller submixers, monitoring was done on a pair of Meyer HD-1 nearfield monitors via a matrix that enabled him to hear the submixes, the Stereo mix, or a return of the Mono audio feed, after compression and media splitting. A rack of 32 NSS 602II active mic splitter ditributed the Soloist, Lectern, an MC mics, along with the submixes, to the Hoise Mixer, BBC, and the Media mix.

This area was linked to the stages by 112 channels of Whirlwind multicore, picking up the 114 mics used on the show. System technician Greg Blades set and struck the stage mics over and again, and became intimately familiar with the workings of the Chinese Orchestra. He was ably assisted by Clara Lee and her colleague Tung, from the HK Academy of Performing Arts technical course, who filled out our show crew compliment. Greg also mixed the feed for the stand-alone sound system servicing the smalll VVIP stand seating the most important Dignitaries, separately balancing the show program and their local lectern during the speeches, and presided over the extensive power distribution and amplifier positions located under the stage and stands, where 3 CyberLogic NC812 8 channel amplifiers powered the Meyer UM-1C and UPA-1C loudspeakers used for foldback.

The large quantity of rain which fell during the show did little to dampen the spirits of the performers and guests. The sound system struggled on valiantly, with only a few orchestra mics becoming unusable as their windshields became completely waterlogged. The main problem we experienced was the sound of water dripping off the umbrellas of the two MCs onto their microphones, making an alarmingly loud pop each time. Several cans of aerosol water-displacer had been used on the mic lead and multicore connectors, protecting even those that spent much of the show under water.

Of course, given a massive event with thousands of cast, a couple of orchestras, and a number of VIP speakers, a large communications system was required. System Sound provided an extensive system of CLearcom wired comms, linked to a multi-channel radio-comms systems that built up to over 52 Motorola portables at one point. The Motorolas were supplied by Delta Sound in the UK, as the frequent allocations we were given could not be programmed into our Australian-band units. The whole coms system was run on an uninteruptable power supply system to protect against power failures. System's Comms technician, Cameron Herbert, spent hours drying out waterloggeed walkie-talkies and getting them back into service in time for the next rehearsal.

The main event over, we had an hour and a half to re-set for another concert at the same venue. The 'Hong Kong Our Home' concert was organised by the RTHK, the local public broadcaster. Unlike the Farewell ceremony, it was open to the general public, and as it was performed in Cantonese, and featured many of the local Canto-Pop stars, was another sell-out. They had only one three-hour rehearsal on this site a week before, and though the show was mostly mimed to a pre-recorded soundtrack, they still pulled off a minor miracle getting it to run smoothly - still in pouring rain. We had to keep the system set up until the afternoon of Wednesday, July 2nd, for a third event. This was the opening ceremony of a huge street parade, which was to feature one of the first public speeches by the new political leader of Hong Kong, but unfortunately cancelled due to the continuing rains about an hour before it was due to start. As we struck the system, a nearby weather station registered a record 8 inches of rain in four hours. With no chance to dry cables and equipment before packing into cases, it was little surprise to us that the load weighed almost 1 ton more on the return trip.

THE HANDOVER CEREMONY

The other event System Sound was involved in, and the reason for all the festivities, was the offical Joint Parties Handover Ceremony, at which control of Hong Kong passed from Great Britain to China. The gigantic new Grand Hall in the HK Convention & Exhibition Centre was still under completion as the event took place. A cavernous venue 90m long, 70m wide, and 26m high, it held 4,000 invited world leaders, who witnessed the lowering of the Union Jack and the Raising of the Chinese flag, accompanied by speeches which have been broadcast around the world. The three 'Parties' - China, Hong Kong, and Britain, each required a number of seats on-stage for officials and dignitaries. The set got so large, that the decision was made to turn the venue around, and put the stage in the foyer, removing five huge doors in the back wall of the room to make a 20m high x 10m high proscenium arch.

This arrangement caused the LD, Lim Tetlow, some considerable difficulty, requiring a complex structure of truss to create a spot platform flown low enough to get a shot under the "proscenium" to the stage.

As a speech-only sound system was required, John Scandrett specified a visually low-key system comprising two clusters of 3 Meyer MSL-3A loudspeakers, with 10 Meyer UPA-1C's for downfill, stagefill, and rear delays. The show was mixed on a Soundcraft K2 console by Kelvin Gedye (with a K1 console standing by as a backup), while Gus Gusterson looked after the three CyberLogic NC812 Powerframe amplifiers which powered the whole system, and all the stage mics.

While the system itself may have been simple, working in the venue was anything but. With a room full of some of the highest profile people on Earth, and a live TV audience of billions, security was necessarily tight. Kelvin and Gus spent most of their time continuously passing through security checkpoints, and generally being slowed down. It was fortuitous that we had so few speakers in the system, as Gus spent much of his time removing handles from the cabinets to allow security forces to inspect their insides with fibre-optic cameras. Another complication was the presence of two Host Broadcasters with identical access rights to the event. Radio Television Hong Kong and China Central Television needeed to be treated in an identical fashion, from camera positions, to microphone access. We ended up providing a set of audience and military band mics which were split to both broadcasters, along with the lectern mics (though a certain broadcaster had trouble selecting the right ones for some speeches), as well as a fully mixed media sound feed to all other organisations in the venue.

Of course, these were not the only events in Hong Kong in Handover week. There was so much going on that the foyers of the hotels used by foreign crews took on the feel of a global entertainment crew's conference. The Hong Kong Handover events that System Sound worked on were truly a multinational effort. Production crews from the UK, USA, Hong Kong, and Australia combined to provide a memorable send-off for the British, and an equally colourful celebration of the resumption of control by China. While many have feelings of uncertainty about their futures in Hong Kong, the vast number of celebratory events created a mood of optimism that will give Hong Kong a good platform to launch into the next 150 years.

June, 1997

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