# The 2011 JUNO AWARDS......Hello Toronto



## faracaster

Hi all
Geez.....I thought if I didn’t bore you all with these Juno build updates this year, no one would notice.....or might even be relieved at not getting these huge emails, saving on their data bills.
But starting on Wednesday, I started receiving many “Hey Where’s the Juno blog emails, I miss them”.
AND.....there’s another reason too.....I have just been too busy to even think about doing this (well I thought about it...and then decided, sleep or blog....sleep won) and we have one less day in the venue than normal this year. Of course I would design the largest set yet knowing those parameters.
So I just want to thank those of you who wrote and those that are interested in this process. Cheers and thanks to you all. 



Coming to you from the shadow of the Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto, welcome to the 2011 Juno awards.
For the first time in 10 years the show is back in it’s originating home of Toronto. Expectations are high for this year as it also coincides with the Juno’s 40th anniversary.
Created by Walt Grealis and Stan Klees, The show started back in 70’ as a small gathering of music industry honchos at the St. Lawrence Hall at King and Jarvis St. in TO. A lot of booze and sandwiches (prepared by Stan’s Mom) were consumed and singer Diane Leigh walked away with the first ever Gold Leaf Award. The term Juno was not instituted till 1971 based on the Roman goddess Juno and Pierre Juneau, head of the CRTC at the time) 

This being the 40th and returning to Hogtown, the mandate was bigger, better, we’re at the Air Canada Centre .......but you have the same money as always. 
This is my tenth year designing the show. The first year I did it was also the first year the Juno Awards became a road show. As a jumping off point in my initial meeting with the Producers of the show, I thought it might be a good idea to bring a bit of the city and the province into the mix. Not obviously, but more abstract. So it seemed to work and we have gone down that path every year. 
Like many things in life it’s hardest to appreciate and observe the things closest to you. Much easier to go to any other part of the country and sit on the sidelines. Watching and making notes from afar. 
Being a life long Torontonian it was very difficult to wrest out a subtle and interesting design. Lots of obvious references abound here but I was looking for something a little unique.

I failed miserably..................and..............also maybe succeeded me thinks. 

I usually design from July to August of the year before the show and have a fully realized version by Labour Day. This year, it did not happen till late in the year and early into this year. I stewed on it, procrastinated, threw out version after version and finally in January gave in to what was my first basic thoughts.
One of my favourite buildings in this city is Toronto New City Hall. A remarkable vision of mid century architecture by Finnish Architect Viljo Revell. I was fascinated by this building when I was a kid. I think it was my Grade 4 class that went on school trip there the year it opened.
I could not comprehend how someone could build two circular halves rising out of what looked like a huge flying saucer. 

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So what if I built two similar columns out of video panels, adorned with some details stolen from the building itself. And finished the edges in a ribbed video tube reminiscent of the building’s north side?
Not subtle but.....worked really well.


Then another architectural item that is iconic of Toronto, but not necessarily a icon of fondness, are the buttress’ that hold up the Gardiner expressway. If you have to travel downtown in Toronto in the summer, you can’t help to have not seen them. In the middle of a traffic jam, under construction, yet again !!!!!!! You can tell it’s spring in TO, the Gardner will be under construction. But there is a sense of strength, security and shelter when you travel under them. I thought ....what if I had a number of them upstage holding up huge walls of video panels?



























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So when you add in a couple cityscapes on each side for presentation areas. Figure out the number of different sized video panels.......154 6mm panels, 498 BR 15 video panels, mix in a little City Hall, crunch in a little Gardiner Expressway. And....

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Voila !!!! The 2011 Juno Awards set.
This is a early rendering of the set. This was the pitch drawing to that got the approval to move ahead. As you will see there were quite a few changes in the subsequent months. Some artistically driven, but most where budgetary driven. 
Now I know that the Globe and Mail will crucify me for being obvious (they had a field day with the chromed oil barrels I used in Calgary) in the design but, Toronto media is well known for eating it’s own. So I’m ready for it.
But I think it just works. Sometimes....you just go with your first impression. 

Set up pix to come.....

Cheers
Pete


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## Hamstrung

Always look forward to this thread. You always pull off something pretty cool!
I never thought of it before but those shots of the Gardener make me think of it as being Toronto's version of Stonehenge!
Just make sure they're taller than 18"!!


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## GuitarsCanada

Looks like its going to be another great one Pete. Looking forward to seeing how you are going to put this one together. Best of luck with the set-up and hope there are no major issues, you dont have much time.


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## faracaster

*Days 1 and 2 (Sunday, Monday)*



















So as I had said before we had one less day in the venue this year. Rigging the arena did not start till 5am Sunday morning (after a rare and remarkable 5-2 win over the big bad Bruins). Which was 165 points to be hung from the ceiling. These points basically hold all our lighting, PA and some set pieces. Our head rigger Courtney Woo (Yum Yum) Had a rather large crew on the go to get these things up as quickly as possible. Lighting eventually got to hang start to hang their trusses. 














































Sometimes no matter how many motors you have......good ol' grunt power is needed










Follow Spot operator chairs (5 of 14) getting ready to hang.


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## faracaster

*Day's 1 and 2 cont'd.....*

PA beginning to be hung




















Endless roadcases of rigging, PA and Lighting. A small sample here.










Decking for the stage had been delivered Day 1 and waiting in the halls to be set up overnight between Sunday and Monday





































Here's Ted and Bernie, my construction heads this year. Starting to assemble the stage.


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## Milkman

Wow, that's a huge show! Very impressive. If you don't mind me asking, what is your job title in this context? Looks like you have a key role in designing and organizing the set up. Do you also contribute musically?


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## faracaster

Milkman said:


> Wow, that's a huge show! Very impressive. If you don't mind me asking, what is your job title in this context? Looks like you have a key role in designing and organizing the set up. Do you also contribute musically?


Thanks Milkman......I'm the Production Designer. I design the stage, set, flow, contribute to graphics and visuals. Just about anything that you can see on camera and more.
I have done some musical contribution in the past actually. I have played stings in and out of commercials, (that was in Edmonton, I waited till we were in the venue and the sound truck recorded me playing through one of Alanis Morrisette's guitar player's rigs from the back of the room through the PA...enormous sound !!!!) I've stood in and played for Daniel Lanois one year. A few opportunities to ply my second life.


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## faracaster

Since we are in the ACC......Lets just turn our attention to it’s most esteemed tenant.
Beyond these stainless steel doors lies..........a team of mediocrity........ For 44 years.
I saw a licence plate yesterday. It had the Leaf logo and the acronym (or “textese”) JST 1 B4 I DI on it.
C’mon Burkie.......pleeeeeese.











Anywho....enough of my misery.


Day 2.......set load in day.
Ian Donald our masterful stage manager headed an overnight crew, putting in 281 4ft x 8ft Stage Wright decks (8,992 sq ft). 











Our set trucks arrived early Monday morning. I had 4 x 53 ft. Semi transport trucks filled to the roof with set this year. 
Here is a shot of most of the pieces laid out over the ice surface.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y49/Petefaragher/IMG_6399.jpg￼


Heres’s Ted and Bernie........preparing for the onslaught

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Custom pieces to the front of the stage being fitted

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Pieces of the “Gardiner Buttress’ being hauled up on stage


















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Here’s a cross section of what’s happening in the buttresses. This is the top horizontal piece of each buttress.
I wanted these to not just be big “concrete” structures. So myself and Alex Nadon (our brilliant Lighting designer) came up with the idea of mounting truss inside the buttress frames.
Alex would load these trusses with lighting. I created a 1”x 1” steel box metal frame that attaches to the truss. We covered the frame with blow through fabric (scrim) and painted them to look like concrete (like the Gardiner). It’s an old theatre trick, You light the scrim from the outside and it looks solid. You turn off the outer lighting and turn on the interior lighting and the fabric disappears. Giving us a completely different look.









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## faracaster

Here’s the top being readied to be flown into position getting ready to accept the layer below it

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Is this really going to work?
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Here’s the upstage video walls being flown.
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Here’s one built and another almost there.

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End of Day 2

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## GuitarsCanada

Fabulous shots once again, Pete. Love to see these huge stages come together


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## greco

Many thanks Pete. I look forward to this thread, with all the great pics, every year.

Cheers

Dave


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## keto

greco said:


> Many thanks Pete. I look forward to this thread, with all the great pics, every year.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Dave


As do I, what more is there to add but thanks for taking the time!


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## faracaster

Day 3 or my nightmare at City Hall.

While the rest of the buttress’ were being erected, all attention focused on getting City Hall up.
This is amalgam of video panels and set construction. 
Although I would have liked to have curved the two structures more severly, Without building a custom engineered truss, I needed to use existing curved truss. Also the video panels had a maximum amout of concave curve to them at 15 %.....so existing truss it is.









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Here the video technicians start to hang the BR 15 video panels

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These pieces like the buttress’s had to be built from the top down. Once a few rows of video were attached then the header of the set was attached to the truss









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This application of the header had to be done very preciscley. The overall height of this piece is just a hair under 50 ft tall. So you don’t want to get to the bottom of it and then discover you need to make an adjustment at the top.
Here is the top header in place and flown up a bit to allow more video panels to be added.

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Ah !!!!!............and they work too. Again, everything was checked as we went up because.......you don’t want to have to do it twice.
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So now that all is well with the top. We start to place the sides of the City Hall......8 ft high at a time. These panels will be flanking both sides.
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## faracaster

s the set gets builds higher, we add more video panels
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Half way there !!!!!

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Here’s Karel Noordover (Technical Producer) and Louise Wood (Producer) wondering why we are behind schedule. And calculating the overtime........YIKES !!!!









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3/4’s there.
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And the first half is finished..........









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......halfway done on City hall.......on to Day 4


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## GuitarsCanada

Pete, is there one person calling all the shots here? How is the order of what happens done, obviously it is a controlled chaos kind of thing


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## faracaster

*Day 4 !!!!!!*

After a number of hours of overtime last night. We really had to boogie this day. 
We already had worked out the bugs of erecting the large half of City Hall.......this small side should be no problem......hopefully.

Mike Aldcroft (head lighting rigger/ technician) and Jim Steele (ACC General Manager) looking at all the tonnage flying in the sky (we were about 56,000 lbs over what had ever been hung in the ACC before........it’s okay.....we had the ACC engineer give us his blessings)








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Yup.......that’s a lot of stuff hangin’ from the roof..........and this is only half of it.

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We had to be mostly finished the set by the end of the day. We still had a half of City Hall and two presentation areas to put up. We needed to hustle !!!! Get the lead out !!! Take it up a notch....whatever !!!

Versa tubes needed to be added to the large City Hall piece. These are similar to florescent lights in shape only. These tubes take a video feed. We would use the same method as before with building these. Top rack first then lift it up and build underneath.

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The presentation areas needed to be built. I have two of them this year. We had to follow a similar plan to City Hall in that the upper set piece would be built, flown up and then the video wall would be set up underneath it.

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Here is the top piece of the presentation stage on camera right ready to be flown.
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Up it goes
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## faracaster

At the same time, the second and smaller City Hall half was being started.
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Camera right Presentation area flown up out the way for video to start building.

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Footings for the video wall being installed.

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Now this is a STACK !!!!












Starting on camera left video wall.
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Oh and while all this was going on inside......THIS was going on outside !!!










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City Hall standing !!!!

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Here’s some frightening work.......I could never do this.
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## faracaster

Here are the boys bringing the rest of the presentation surround up to the stage









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Top being flown in.








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Camera right presentation area almost finished

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Now.......if I could just help this along a bit, we could all get home before midnight.
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Day 4 over and the set is 95% there










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## faracaster

Here’s a quick wrap-up note (as we have a little show tonight and I’ll be a little busy later on).

Day 4 was monumental in completing the big strokes of the design. We ended up staying in the ACC till about 1:30 am.
There was only small tweaks to accomplish from here on. 
Day 5 was our first day with camera’s in the bowl so that’s when the “oh, by the way’s” start to come. However....this year there was not any of significance to mention.

Here’s a shot of the set early Day 5 morning before the main crew call













Here’s a few shots from rehearsals. This was our first go throughs with all the looks.



























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So.........we are off and running.
Thanks to everyone for reading these. And..........tune in tonight CTV 8pm if you can. Support LIVE Canadian music

Cheers
pete


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## GuitarsCanada

Fantastic, Pete. Great job


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## mingo

Hopefully I'll see you there, or at an after party!?


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## Nemo

Wow! Amazing set, Pete! Thanks so much for sharing these pictures with us. I am recording it in case I don't get back in time to watch it from the beginning.


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## Mooh

Looks incredible! Thanks for sharing it all with us. The p.a. looks huge!

Peace, Mooh.


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## mrmatt1972

I showed my wife and daughter this thread the morning before the show, we all agreed that the set is spectacular. After watching the show last night, we're all even more impressed. Seemless live show and it looked amazing. The music was great and sounded great too. All in all, WOW!

Great job Pete!


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## Milkman

Pete,

I tend to avoid awards shows like the plague. They're just not my cup of tea. The mutual back slapping and such really gets tiresome.

However, I watched this one because I know you had a key role and I was interested in the results.

All I can say is, congratulations on what I can only describe as brilliant work. I have no idea what the mix was like in the house. In my living room it was better than the typical TV mix but not as good as it probably was in the venue.

Visually it was amazing. Frankly I was questioning the merit of the amount of work and resources it seemd to consume, but seeing the results quickly eliminated that concern.

Amazing job.

Thanks for the inside look.


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## marcos

*Junos*

Incredible,just amazing to see this go up. You must be a proud Canadian!!!!
Hell of a job.


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## washburned

Couldn't find much else on so I watched the first two hours....typical kiss kiss smooch smooch awards show, but yes, that set rocked!


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## GuitarsCanada

I have to admit that I have not heard of three quarters of the people that were nominated or got awards. But Pete worked his magic again for sure.


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## Bruiser74

The show was great, long live Neil Young!
Great job with everything and thanks for posting all the pics of the process!


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## faracaster

mingo said:


> Hopefully I'll see you there, or at an after party!?



I didn't get to see you after Jason but, I sure saw your wife. CONGRATULATIONS to Meaghan and yourself.
Cheers
pete


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## faracaster

Thanks all for peeking into this thread.
Just to answer a few questions here,......
The sound is FANTASTIC in the house Milkman. the PA is designed for the show and the particular venue. Then we have a couple of days to tweak it. So it really can't get any better for arena sound.

I did think the TV was was superior this year to the previous years. We have a round table post-mortem every year and the thing that comes up constantly is TV sound. Which sadly is out of our hands. CTV say they transmit as they get it (hmmm) and blame the carriers. So it may be Shaw, Rogers, Bell, whoever's ultimate delivering of the show that makes the difference. But I get a DVD of the show every year from the truck and it sounds freakin' great on there.


I'm happy to report that 97% of the set got either recycled or repurposed this year. That makes for very little landfill. (last year I think we were able to repurpose 100%)


ALSO......this was the most watched Juno Awards show in their 40 year history. We got the numbers late Monday and we had an average of 2.4 million viewers. A peak of 3.15 million and a staggering 7.6 million Canadians watched the show at some point. 


Thanks to all for looking at and responding to this thread.
I do believe the Juno Awards will be in Ottawa next year. Hopefully I will be there too.

Cheers
pete


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## keto

I was disappointed not to see a pic of YOU somewhere in there. Put one up and take a bow!


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## mingo

faracaster said:


> I didn't get to see you after Jason but, I sure saw your wife. CONGRATULATIONS to Meaghan and yourself.
> Cheers
> pete


Thanks a lot Pete it was a great night! And a great set, it looked spectacular!


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## mrmatt1972

faracaster said:


> I'm happy to report that 97% of the set got either recycled or repurposed this year. That makes for very little landfill. (last year I think we were able to repurpose 100%)


So, do you get one of the giant TV screens in your livingroom.


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## bolero

WOW....that's amazing, I've never seen behind the scenes setup of anything like that before


congratulations, and what a fantastic concept...old city hall surrounded by the gardner expressway columns!! 

hilarious & brilliant: both instantly recognizeable TO landmarks

thx for the pix & info!


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## flashPUNK

I was at the Juno awards this year, actually sat about 10 rows behind Mr Neil Young, and spotted Pete back stage just before the show started.

The show was fantastic, the set was amazing.

Great job Pete!


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## WCGill

Daunting undertaking, I'm sure the anxiety runs high at times but extremely satisfying in the end when it all comes together as it did this year. Thanks.


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