Stage and screen at the Mulwala concert.

Saturday the 26th of February in Mulwala was supposed to be a Willie Nelson concert for all the locals near the border of Victoria and NSW. A week before the concert Willie pulled out of his Australian tour, the official word being that Willy had acute laryngitis (wouldn't expect him to pull an ugly laryngitis).

This put the organizers into a bit of a tailspin and numbers dropped. In the end it became a seven hour concert that included Lee Kernighan plus Sara Storer, Bruce McCumstie, several support acts and more cowboy hats than a gay leather shop.

Larry Ponting from Johnson's Audio was the production manager. They sub hired Powa audio in for the event due to the numerous changes to touring schedules made due to the cancellation of Willie Nelson. Powa provided the equipment - Johnston Audio provided all crew.

Larry made a point of going out of his way to ensure everything went better than planned. "The Mulwala people backing the show consisted of a bunch of good honest local groups" he said. "It became a real labour of love". And for the record, Larry said, "Powa's system worked admirably, as did Phaseshift's lights and Lex AV's screen and cameras".

The new video wall in operation at the concert. Almost as bright as the stage.

This was the 1st gig that Lex Audio Visual's new 12 x 6 meter Airwall outdoor projection screen was to be used. It provided a cheaper, bigger, clearer alternative to LED screens with out all the strobing artifacts associated with many LED screens. Standing 8.8 meters tall x 12.5 meters wide, the Airwall is the only one of it's kind in Australia.

Daylight view of the setup showing tie downs for the large screen.

The screen has several benefits over other inflatable screens in that it only requires it's own footprint for erection and pack down which is 12.5 x 1.6 meters. The whole screen was delivered and fully erected in a whisker* over an hour. Three cameras covered the concert, one mobile camera on stage, one fixed in the lighting tower plus a lipstick camera over the drums.

It was almost exclusively a Sony video chain, Both cameras were Sony Broadcast cameras, Sony vision mixer and Sony projectors pumping out over 10 000 lumens of light to the big screen. Lex Audio can be contacted at any time to discuss the screen (or tell you the gossip we couldn't print here).

Whisker* = Technical term, known only to highly trained staff and industry personnel.