STAR LIVE festival’ s Hangar Stage to frame the huge video screens, while its VerTech system formed the backbone of the 80,000-capacity event’ s Magic Sky Stage. For BST, it once again used its Titan Stage system to create the unique Great Oak Stage, its VISTA-covered seating system for the hospitality pavilion, and the modular Starbox building solution to deliver multiple brand activations for American Express and British Airways.
Building on its longstanding relationship with Jim King’ s LS Events and AEG Presents working on BST and All Points East, Star Live played an integral part in the launch of the promoter’ s third major London festival, LIDO. It supplied the Victoria Park event with the main stage, stage 2 and stage 3, along with delay towers and AVPs.
Among the many other headlinegrabbing new projects was the completion of NEON at Battersea Power Station. Working with NEON Global,
Caption Star Live created a fully integrated 3,200m ² immersive, semi-permanent, venue within one of the UK’ s most tightly regulated developments with less than
Caption eight months spent on site.
“ Unlike conventional structure companies, we assumed the role of principal contractor and principal designer, gaining a permanent building control certificate,” says Muir.“ In terms of its strength, loading and the aesthetic, we have raised the bar in terms of what’ s possible with rapidly deployed technology.”
Star Live may be best known for its stages but another key element of its offering for the past two decades has been the provision of mothergrids to venues including Wembley Arena and Beijing’ s Wukesong Arena. At the latter, the grid was first used when the venue became the 2008 Olympic Basketball Arena. The mothergrid’ s flexibility has since helped enable the venue to host a broad range of content from UFC Fight Night and the 2022 Winter Olympics Women’ s Ice Hockey to concerts by acts including Beyonce, Eagles and Metallica.
Muir says Star Live has supplied mothergrids to venues around the
ULTRA OPENS OPPORTUNITIES FOR OASIS
Star Live stages director Pete Holdich outlines why the Ultra Stage used on the Oasis Live’ 25 Tour is such an important step for the company, and global tour promoters.
Star Live’ s Ultra Stage was used throughout the UK & Ireland leg of the Oasis tour, and the band’ s huge Heaton Park set up is understood to be the largest ever used during a UK concert tour. On that occasion the stage carried screen supports that reached 85 metres wide by 12m high, some 20m wider than the screens at the band’ s stadium shows.
The innovative stage design was conceptualised in 2017, for an Adele tour, to handle huge audio loads, intricate rigging design and Star Live’ s wind management systems.
The system was adapted for the Oasis tour to meet the requirements of the promoters and show designer Paul Normandale. It was then tailored for individual venues to enhance sightlines and sound quality while also enabling the promoter to sell more tickets.
“ Wembley was the benchmark,” says Holdich.“ Paul, and the promoters, wanted a really wide look to fill the end space at Wembley, but the limitations there are the egress points. We extended the screens by cantilevering them with a 4.5m clearance so vehicles could still get in. That played out perfectly for Murrayfield too, and with a couple of tweaks for Cardiff.
“ THAT STAGE, FOR US, IS A STATEMENT OF INTENT.”
“ Heaton Park was going to be the flagship shows of the UK run, and they wanted to go that bit further there, so we took the cantilevered wing and extended it even further and had additional towers to give us 85m of video screen from stage left to right.”
Holdich says other key features include allblack steel truss for an improved aesthetic, and a 11m reinforced cantilever roof that supports more than 27 tonnes of rigging, while in-stage tech bunkers each have 62m ² of clear space and a retractable roof system. The stage ' s wind management system, including 120-tonne concrete ballast blocks and a fabric back wall system, ensure stability in varying conditions.
One of the key advantages for the Oasis tour was the ability to adapt the system to broaden sightlines and increase the sellable capacities says Holdich:“ Traditionally, you ' d sell 180 degrees from the first sightline obstruction, the support towers. We had already achieved a very open sightline by placing the support towers 11 metres back from the downstage edge, we then swung the screens back by another 20 degrees to give us this 200-degree sightline. Doing that enables the promoter to sell across a much wider sightline.” world, from Saudi Arabia to Mexico:“ It enables operators to switch the format from a sport like basketball to something completely different very quickly, so it really helps maximises the venue usage opportunities.
“ The Star Live of old was purely a staging company but we now have many more strings to our bow, including seating, brand activations with Star Box, and the design and build of semipermanent structures. Our international reach has also grown, with basis in Malaysia, China and Saudi Arabia – providing workflow that is counter cyclical to our UK projects.
“ This year has been fantastic for Star Live; there has been a lot of hard work and a bit of luck, but the plannings all came together, and as we head into our 50th year, next year, and technical director Roger Barrett’ s 50th year, we ' re laser focused on bringing it all together for another landmark year. We ' ve invested a lot of money, employed more staff, have new premises and expanded the offering, and now we ' re really starting to see that investment bear fruit.”
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