Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/683118
27 It started as it usually does with a simple phone call. The call was from longtime friend Bruce Arledge. He said that there would be a production of Grease and that he was the Sound Designer. The show would be produced at Warner Bros. Studios Burbank and it would air live January 31, 2016. He went on to say that there would be fifty-three wireless microphones required and as yet undetermined quan- tity of IEMs. The show would take place on multiple stages and that the microphones have to be supported by one antenna system regardless of where they were being used during the show. He also noted that Jessie J would open the show with a walk, singing live, with ear monitors and that she would begin on Stage 26 and end in front of the set of Rydell High School traversing a distance of more than six hundred feet. He knew that we had an antenna system (the Phoenix system) that was capable of successfully doing this type of project. He also said that he and Mark King, the Production Audio Mixer, had conferred and agreed that Soundtronics was probably best suited to do the show. Would we be interested? Jason Bellamy, the Managing Partner of Soundtronics, took the call, thanked him for the opportunity and said we were. At the first production meeting, with stage plots and a map of the Warner Bros. lot in front of me, I began to become aware of the overall scope of this project. The show would encompass fourteen sets over twenty acres of real estate. I remembered having a conversa- tion with Mr. Arledge and hearing him say that most of the scenes take place on Stages 23, 26 and the Rydell High School set, which on the Warner Bros. map was known as the K building located on the backlot. Another look at the map showed that Stage 26 was almost equidistant between Stage 23 and the K building. The next step was to schedule a site survey where detailed measurements could be taken. The findings of the survey were far from being favor- able, at least from an RF spectrum perspective. The RF environments in Stages 23 and 26 were relatively friendly. Both stages fairly well shielded with wire mesh on the walls and ceiling, Stage 23, being the better of the two. In the K building/Rydell High School, we were not as fortunate. There was next to no RF shielding in this building. The structure offered protection from the sun and very little more. The RF environment in the open areas outside of the structures can only be described as hostile. LA is a huge market with wall-to-wall DTV channels in the 500 MHz to 700 MHz frequency ranges. Channel 19, 500 MHz–506 MHz was the only exception. Every other channel had DTV in it at some level. Additionally, Channel 19 is no bargain. At that fre- quency, there is usually enough local interference caused by other electronics on stage to raise the noise floor 6 dB to 8 dB or more. In some cases, Channel 19 can be more difficult to work in than a low-power DTV channel. Luckily, more than seven of the DTV channels that registered on my spectrum analyzer were from out of the area and were legal to use at the Warner Bros. location. I selected the best three of those and that is what we went with. That netted us 24 MHz of dirty spectrum in which we need to get twenty-four microphones to work seamlessly. I remember feeling confident at the time that we could do that, but we needed fifty-three, leaving us twenty-nine micro- phones short. To make up for this shortfall, we had to find more usable spectrum. The first thing we did was apply to the FCC for special licensing so we could gain access to the spectrum between 944 MHz and 960 MHz. This would buy us 16 MHz of bandwidth that would yield eighteen usable frequencies. The second thing we needed to do was gain at least partial use of the ISM band. This is the band between 902 MHz and 928 MHz. To be able to successfully operate in these frequency ranges, we would need to have the full cooperation of the Warner Bros. frequency coordina- tor, Ara Mkhitaryan, and that is exactly what we got. He could not have been more helpful. Thanks to him, we were able gain access to 11.5 MHz in the ISM band that would yield fifteen usable frequencies. Let's see now, 24 + 18 + 15 = 57 and we needed 53. The Warner Bros. Studio lot and the fourteen sets over twenty acres for Grease Live!