(18/08/2014) Adlib was again right at the core of the action for four days of amazing public theatre that saw the return of the Royal De Luxe giant marionettes to the city for a weekend of fun, history, poignancy and superlative entertainment.
The show Memories of August 1914 was devised to commemorate the centenary of the start of World War 1 - in the process highlighting the heroic Liverpool Pals who answered Lord Kitchener's call for volunteer recruits - and pulled an estimated one million people into downtown Liverpool for one of the most successful ever public arts events staged in the UK.
copyrighted by Shirlaine Forrest Adlib provided sound systems for the main seven performance sites dotted around the city centre, working for Liverpool City Council's events department. It followed on from Adlib's very successful servicing of the Giants' Sea Odyssey spectacular in 2012.
The different sites all accommodated large crowds between 10,000 and 40,000 people who needed to hear the performance soundtrack clearly from all positions as the Giants moved around the city following a carefully choreographed route unfolding their story.
It was, a vast logistical operation for Adlib, which was co-ordinated by Director Phil Stoker and involved 16 Adlib technicians. Stoker worked closely with the event's Production Manager Stu Stalker and Production Assistant Jonathan Sims.
The various audio systems all based around L-Acoustics or Coda elements - were co-designed by Adlib's Tony Szabo and Royal De Luxe's Sound Designer, Stephane Brosse.
The seven sites were St George's Hall, Newsham Park, Mann Island, Canning Dock, Clarence Dock, the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Queensway Tunnel, and very often the systems were de-rigged from one and had to leapfrog ahead of the procession to being set up in the next location!
copyrighted by Shirlaine Forrest At St George's Hall, Adlib installed an L-Acoustics K2 system comprising 11 speakers-a-side flown off Adlib's new Prolyte PA towers, complete with Lake processing / control and a Soundcraft Vi1 console.
At Newsham Park, one of the largest sites for audience numbers, attracting crowds of around 40,000, Adlib installed two hangs of L-Acoustics K1, with 10 speakers per hang flown off 40-tonne tower cranes and more Lake / Soundcraft control.
Clarence Dock was catered for with another K1 system on cranes and attracted? another 10,000 people or so.
For the three sites at Mann Island, the Metropolitan Cathedral and Queensway Tunnel, all the PAs were deployed on the back of two flatbed Hiab crane trucks for quick deployment. They arrived on the sites and elevated the PA arrays just ahead of the Giants arriving to play out their scene.
These Hiabs were each loaded with 12 x Coda LA12 speakers, complete with Soundcraft SI compact mixers.
In all cases the audio signals from the music / band truck accompanying the giant marionette cast of three characters the Little Girl, the Grandmother and Xolo the dog - as they moved around town were beamed via RF link over to the Adlib systems at each of the stopping points.
For the finale at Canning Dock, the entire Waterfront was closed and the Giants moved onto the water in boats, which sailed off down the Mersey River in a wave of smoke and emotion for the highly dramatic show end.
The Canning dock entailed a fast set up of a hang of 20 deep K1 from a 3 axle mobile tower crane and then hung at the edge of the water so, it would throw across the water to the road, (which entailed 100m to the first person & 130m to the last person) that was just directly in front. The side coverage was 180m to the first person. This had to be done and ready in 4hrs from the crane arriving on site to the Giants performing! The soundtrack was mixed through one of Adlib's DiGiCo SD10 consoles.
copyrighted by Shirlaine Forrest Phil Stoker states, As a Liverpool company, we were all extremely proud to be part of this event which did so much to capture the public imagination and I'm sure inspire many people who might not go to a conventional theatre show to be part of the performance .
He adds that it wasn't so much the actual sound systems that were the challenge in this case as the technical requirements for these were relatively straightforward It was the logistics that were the galvanising part
This was in terms of the sheer timescale needed to build the systems and de-rig them in time to travel to the next site, re-rig, line check and be ready for the procession again.
Our crew were fantastic as always and really embraced the unique atmosphere, spirit and community of the occasion, he says. We could all appreciate what an historic opportunity it was, to assist people in enjoying the City and all it has to offer .
Adlib proudly created in Liverpool!
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
(18/08/2014) Adlib was again right at the core of the action for four days of amazing public theatre that saw the return of the Royal De Luxe giant marionettes to the city for a weekend of fun, history, poignancy and superlative entertainment.
