In 1978, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds made its debut. This year, The War of the Worlds — Alive On Stage paid homage to Wayne’s Worlds in arenas around the UK and Europe. RG Jones, meanwhile, supplied a Synco by Martin Audio-based sound system for the touring spectacle The production included a 10 piece band, 36 piece string orchestra, five singers, a flying bridge, an 80-foot-wide video screen, a 3D holographic projection of narrator Richard Burton and a 10-meter-high Martian fighting machine with pneumatic legs, all supported by nine trucks and 44 crew.
“I’ve been attempting to convey the honeyed tones of Richard Burton to thousands of people along with the huge sound of the band and orchestra and surround sound effects — with a reasonable level of success, I feel,” said RG Jones engineer Simon Honywill, who mixed FOH.
“Arena acoustics don’t always lend themselves to intelligibility, and the devotees of the original work are very quick to criticize if they miss a single syllable of the iconic script, but it was a privilege to be able to have the voice of Burton under my fingers, and every show was a unique challenge,” Honywill added.
Steve Nolan, the show’s technical director of the show, asked Honywill to take on the task. “I leapt at it,” Honywill said, “because it’s a completely brilliant thing to do — it’s a totally unique piece of work, the whole sonic imprint of it and the component parts of the orchestra, rock ‘n’ roll band, the narration and the effects add up to an incredible show that’s impressive in many ways.
“It’s very true to the original work, with just a few little extra items added on here and there, but essentially it all has to work around the Richard Burton narration so everything’s click track and time coded, allowing automation to play an important role in managing the 112 or so inputs,” Honywill added.
Adapting to venues ranging from the Bournemouth CIC to London’s O2 Arena kept production manager Kevin Hopgood and his team busy. Special effects were incorporated from the original album multitracks into the live show, as well as some musical elements so as to keep the musician count practical. But most of the show was performed live via the band and orchestra, precisely timed to the CGI movie that runs all the way through, amid numerous effects, props and the Martian fighting machine and bridge that move into position during the show.
Clear sightlines to the large projection and set were vital, and conventional positions for the PA hangs were not available. Instead, the RG Jones team flew the main PA of up to 48 Synco W8LCs and 16 W8LMs, depending on venue, very wide and high upstage, supplemented by a pair of eight deep Synco W8LM hangs arrayed as stereo infills. L-Acoustics ARCS provided surround-sound effects.
“We wanted the PA to be as discrete as possible, whilst needing it to deliver,” Honywill noted. “The infills were angled down quite heavily just to cover the first block and we added some front fill on the stage lip and covered the main arena with the big arrays.
“In the original, the low frequencies are very tight and well defined and we worked to make it sound like that, with a highly tuned PA, in order to mix this huge musical picture on top of it,” Honywill added. “I wanted to put my mark on it, and I wanted it to be as live as possible. The number one priorities were making sure Richard Burton’s voice was absolutely intelligible, and the sound of the orchestra. I wanted to keep it faithful to the sound of the original, but live.”
To help maintain a clean stage sound, there were no wedges, with all musicians and vocalists on in-ear monitors, using a mix of Sennheiser and Shure radio mics and DPA cardioid headsets, Sennheiser wired and wireless in-ears and a Canford in-ear orchestral monitor system.
Orchestral miking was achieved using DPAs, with violins and violas on 4061s and cello and basses on the new 4099 miniature cardioids. The guitarists were equipped with Line 6 Pods, while the acoustic drum kit featured electronic cymbals, and the harp was miked with a pair of C-ducers. Steve Watson mixed stage sound on a DiGiCo D5 with an external processing rack.
Honywill mixed FOH on a Digidesign combination of a D-Show and a Profile, using automation throughout across 25 scenes, set up for each section of the show. “It ended up being mixed on about 12 faders of the D-Show with an extra sidecar for the playback and vocals, while the orchestra was on the Profile,” he noted. “Both consoles were chasing timecode. The D-Show, being the bigger console, had most of the automation, on two layers, with the layer I couldn’t see handling mostly the playback, a couple of vocal effects and the sound effects.”
In conclusion, Honyhill reported that “it’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done — but everyone was really happy with the result, and I felt very in my element and at home dealing with it…it’s kind of ingrained into my psyche!”
