NEWARK, NJ — The 2023 MTV Video Music Awards were broadcast live on Tuesday, Sept. 12 from Prudential Center in Newark, NJ on MTV and affiliated networks, with music industry A Listers gathered to celebrate an iconic night of music.
Taylor Swift dominated the evening, winning nine of the 11 VMA award categories for which she was nominated. Among the wins for her camp: “Show of the Summer” for the ongoing Eras stadium tour. It’s currently projected to be the first concert tour ever to rake in more than $1 billion in sales.
Red Hook, NY-based Firehouse Productions deployed a JBL VTX system for 18,000 enthusiastic fans packing the arena for the star-studded ceremony. With Nicki Minaj serving as host, the show featured performances by Swift along with Sean “Diddy” Combs, Olivia Rodriguez, Demi Lovato, and Doja Cat, among others.
“We have done so many VMA’s now over the years, and I always use JBL,” said Mark Dittmar, VP at Firehouse Productions. “The sound, power and control are exactly what I need for this project.” As in previous years, the main system included 108 VTX V25-ii-CS three-way loudspeakers, which Dittmar credited for power and intelligibility.
This year, Firehouse moved to some different JBL models for fill loudspeakers. “We switched to the VTX A8 (dual 8-inch compact line array elements, arranged in a center cluster) for down fill, and the VTX A6 (sub-compact dual 6.5-inch line array elements) for front fill, which made intelligibility extremely strong. I think the A8s are spectacular, though we’re still getting a feel for the right way to use them,” Dittmar said. “We were certainly asking a lot from the A6s for front fill, but they handled it easily.”
JBL VTX S28 and G28 subs rounded out the system. Crown IT4X3500 and IT12K providing a total 1.5 million watts of P.A. power, governed by JBL’s Performance Manager, to drive the 180+ box system. At monitors, Firehouse deployed 30 of its F12 wedges along with six JBL F18 drum subs, also powered by Crown IT4X3500 amps.
For mixing the show and the music, the engineers at FOH used a Yamaha PM10 plus a pair of DiGiCo 338 consoles, with two DiGiCo SD7 consoles for monitor mixing.
The wireless setup included 98 mics relying on Sennheiser Digital 6000, Shure Axient Digital and Shure UHF-R Wireless systems, with 36 Shure PSM 1000 IEM systems also in use along with 220 belt packs.
Although the scale of the project might seem daunting, with a crew of 56 audio pros on site looking after live sound, broadcast operations, comms systems and more than 100 RF mics, Dittmar noted that the Firehouse crew had everything under control — with many of the details organized well in advance of the show. “We designed the P.A. two months ago,” he said. “The design never changed between then and show days. With all the software nowadays, it’s so much easier.”
Dittmar also gave credit to the “amazing” audio team members and noted that the various departments worked together in a harmonious way. “We designed an infrastructure that allows the producers to create around it. We provide a setup to do everything we want and have it sound good, while also giving them the freedom to design and create their set, even while onsite.”
As a multipurpose space, Prudential Center was not built to cater exclusively to shows like the VMAs, inevitably posing some audio challenges. “The first and biggest limitation we were up against was weight,” Dittmar said, noting “huge weight restrictions in the room. The Pru is asymmetrical,” he added. “You can hang much more weight on one end than the other. But the VMAs aren’t a rock ‘n’ roll left/right show. It is in-the-round, with three stages on the floor: a North stage, a South stage, and a production stage on the East side.”
Another challenge: the need to maintain clear lines of sight for the TV cameras. “We can’t hang speakers at trim height like a rock show,” Dittmar said. “The VMAs have a very open look, so the middle of the room is kept clear, and we can’t have big hangs cluttering up the camera views. The people down in the pit are the ones right on camera, and there’s no place we can put big piles of subs down there. Plus, there is a cable cam under the scoreboard, so we can’t rig there.”
With those restrictions, Firehouse needed rigging capable of handling taxing deployments. “One of the reasons I’ve stuck with JBL is that doing a standard, left/right rock hang is easy to do with any system, but when we do 20-box hangs, trim at high heights, and use extreme angles, we really push the rigging systems to the limits. We rely on JBL’s software to confirm that we are still safe.”
In the end, Dittmar’s greatest pride in how Firehouse handled the VMAs came from having more or less worked himself out of a job by show day. “You know, in the past, I was involved in more details, but now, during the show I’m mostly sitting and monitoring four channels of intercom and marveling at how smoothly it all unfolds. I now realize that if I’m still doing stuff on the day of the show, we haven’t set it up right.”
