Have you ever wondered how your favorite concerts are made? How long does it take from hanging 1st rigs till your favorite artist perform? If you really wanna know check out this article(1 of 2).
Location: Eastern Europe, Poland, Warsaw.
Object capacity : Around 15 000 people
Start: Briefing(for stage hands) should be scheduled at about 6:45 but usually there is some time difference due to trucks and artists arrival, this is caused by different locations of the concert events. If an artist is on tour in Europe they play in different locations- on Monday they are for example in Prague and next day in the morning they should be in Warsaw (that is about 700 km). To be honest they do not really have time to explore countries they visit. So if they have meetings with fans please have in mind that they use up a lot of their energy.
OK let's assume trucks just arrived, 5 of them, it is 9 o'clock AM and 20-24 people for load out. There are only few places in eastern Europe with corresponding infrastructure to make the load out easy using forklifts- but not in Warsaw. That means you need to have some muscles. One case on wheels can weight about 350 kilos and it looks like this=>
Usually the load out can last up to 3 hours sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes less time.
Let us assume it started at 9:00 finished at at 12:00. Now the real stage hand business kicks in- and of course it only means you're busy :) it is not about making money. Let me digress- people who usually want to be stage hand are people who play in bands, sing in bands basically are engaged in some kind of creative work which is not providing any money( that can be another story if anyone would like me to write it). Stage hand provides some money but not enough to have an easy life.
Riggers- guys who made rigging started their work day before- made our work possible. Thanks to them the motors can be pulled up- we hang different stuff on it like subs lights sometimes people :) at this stage it looks like this.
On both sides you can see sound towers in the middle you can notice LED screens. (pic below)
Do you want to know more?
PS. At this point I got drunk. If you have any interest in this topic let me know. I'm sure I'll finish this when I'll be sober.