LED screen and sound in the town square for the New Year's Eve bells and the Three Kings parade

To ring in the New Year's Eve bells or welcome the Three Kings parade in the town square, a town council needs four things: an outdoor LED screen hung at a good height, sound that reaches the back, a picture to put on the screen and the event permits sorted out. Our own screen measures up to 4 × 2 metres with a 3.9 mm pitch, and it is the one we set up for Caudete Town Council for the Spain-Argentina World Cup match. Here we explain how to prepare the night in your square.

What the square needs

• The screen, hung from a structure above people's heads, so that those at the back can see it too.
• The sound, spread out so the countdown is heard as well in the front row as at the back of the square.
• The picture: what is shown on the screen and who controls it during the event.
• The power: where it comes from and where the distribution board goes, something to agree with the council's technical services.
• The event permits and insurance, which depend on the municipality and the autonomous community.

The New Year's bells: what is shown on the screen

The first thing to decide is which picture will ring in the bells. If the council wants to show a TV channel's broadcast on the screen, it has to confirm beforehand that it may do so at a public event: we do not take it for granted and leave it to the council. The other option is not to rely on TV and prepare a picture of your own. Either way, we can produce it with the council's on-screen graphics, as in Caudete, where the match graphic and the lower thirds carried the town crest.

Whatever the picture, choose a single reference for the grapes and tell the audience. A TV broadcast can reach the screen with some delay, and it is usually longer if received over the internet. If people in the square follow the screen and people at home follow the TV, the bells may not match to the second, and that is fine as long as everyone in the square follows the same one. What you must avoid is two different countdowns playing at once.

After midnight the square carries on: with the same sound system you can play music or move on to a street party, and the screen can keep showing the council's graphics or images of the celebration.

The Three Kings parade: arriving in the square

In the parade, the square is usually the end of the route: the Kings arrive there, speak to the crowd and greet the children. With lots of people standing, those at the back can barely see the stage; with a camera and live production, the screen shows the whole square what is happening up there, like event streaming but for the audience on site. Sound for the floats along the route is a separate, mobile setup, which we also prepare for town councils.

What size screen for a square

With a 3.9 mm pitch, the picture is comfortable to watch from about 4 metres, so it is best to leave that space clear in front of the screen. For the back, the rule of thumb for video is that the last row should be no further than about 8 times the picture height: with 2 metres of height, about 16 metres. If your square is bigger, we put together a larger screen to fit. The full calculation is in what size LED screen do I need.

Sound: making the countdown heard across the square

Outdoors you need quite a lot more power than in a hall, around 30 to 50 % more as a reference, because the sound does not bounce off walls or a ceiling. At the Spain-Argentina match in Caudete we put more than 4,000 W RMS of HK Audio on either side of the screen. In a long square, the sound from the front is not enough for the back and has to be spread out; we explain how in how to set up sound in a town square for concerts.

A winter night outdoors

The New Year's bells and the parade take place at night and in the middle of winter. The screen and sound should be set up and tested before people arrive, and it is worth checking the weather forecast in the days before: wind and rain affect a structure with a hanging screen, and any change is decided with the person in charge of the event.

Permits and insurance

Even if the council itself organises the event, the liability insurance, the use of the square and whatever the autonomous community's regulations require for the expected attendance must be sorted out. We go through it with a checklist in insurance and permits for municipal events.

What to send us

• The event (New Year's bells, parade or both), the town and the date
• A photo or a plan of the square and where the screen would go
• How many people you expect and how far away the furthest audience would be
• What you want on the screen: a TV broadcast (if the council may show it), a live camera or your own graphics
• Where there is a power point nearby