UK - Toby Alington and his team at Richmond Studios Productions are amidst last minute preparations for recording the UK's largest annual music show, The BRIT Awards 2013 in association with MasterCard.
Whilst this will be Alington's 19th year recording The BRITs, it is set to be one of the most exhilarating productions with the Nation's on-going Diamond Jubilee and Olympic fever. The new BRIT Award statue has been designed by Damien Hirst and has already caught the public's eye, and the show will once again be hosted by James Corden.
Alington and his audio team will mix the music for the live-to-air show from Floating Earth's state-of-the-art mobile recording unit, Floating Earth. This is equipped with an SSL C200 digital console, linked to over 100 remote mic-amps connected by fibre-optic cable which provide the feeds to be mixed and broadcast live on television. This will be parked alongside the picture outside broadcast trucks at the O2 Arena in Greenwich, where the star-studded event will be held for its third year in a row.
The BRIT Awards had originally been broadcast live, culminating in the memorable Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood show in 1989. From 1990, it was decided that the show would be recorded, edited and broadcast the following evening. With overnight music mixing, and a frantic audio visual post-production schedule through the day of its broadcast, the show was trimmed and tweaked whilst retaining its as-live feel.
With the re-introduction of live-to-air broadcast of the BRITs in 2007, the broadcast team returned to the pressures of live-broadcast. Alington's long-term history of working on live multi-artist shows, such as the annual MTV EMAs, Concert for Diana, FIFA's World Cup Kick-off Concert in Soweto and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert indicate his penchant for complicated fast-moving broadcasts. Alington gave two talks at the PLASA Show in September 2012 focussing on the Diamond Jubilee concert and the award-winning Adele "Live at the Royal Albert Hall" releases, both of which were indications of his passion for live music television.
With this year's expected performances from the likes of Adele, Robbie Williams, Muse, Emeli Sandé, One Direction and Mumford & Sons, Alington will be part of an amazing production team who have huge experience and understanding of music shows of this nature.
