CONCERTS & TOURING
39
team to weave in real-time effects, giving each song a distinct visual aesthetic that matched the band’s artistic intent. “The IMAG screens didn’t just show what was happening,” Siegel expands, “they were part of the performance. We also managed to keep latency to a minimum across all the various camera feeds, which was crucial for maintaining synchronisation with the live action occurring on stage.” Powerful graphics cards in the Disguise server helped here, making sure any post-processing effects were applied instantly – and without introducing noticeable lag. “To maintain audio and video sync, especially for such a large venue, we ensured that the various video feeds transmitted over fibre were perfectly aligned, and we used the Atem mixer to distribute audio feeds.” SOLAR SETTINGS Ox Event House was brought on board to deliver the show’s spacey set – known
The Atem 2 Constellation switcher enabled a multiview layout at FOH for visibility of the stage from all angles
The visuals of each song gave them a unique, colourful identity
worked with regularly since the late nineties. They started talking to a rigging company, “to make sure we had enough motors and ensure that the set team were going to be able to clip it together quick enough every day to achieve the look they wanted,” Levitt adds. “The floor system was an exact mimic of the system above, so lining them up and getting it perfectly right was really challenging – but equally as exciting.” Levitt also comments on the hands- on approaches that were required from Lutkin, Cassius and 80six to integrate video into the performance. “The circular video was one of the main structural elements, which presented the unique task of dressing it with the right depths for the LED Creative team to integrate their system.” COSMIC CREATIVITY Another of the show’s stars wasn’t the band itself, but the Pepper’s ghost
for its market-leading expertise in stage set and prop manufacture. Having worked with Glass Animals’ production manager Simon Lutkin previously (creating aluminium staging that incorporated giant pineapples and cacti, no less), the band’s growth in popularity meant bigger shows and more ambitious prop and set design. “We were presented with a design from Cassius Creative, who we’d worked for before on an American arena tour,” begins Ben Levitt, technical director at Ox Event House. “The design featured a huge, suspended lighting pod with 72 moving lights in it and formed funnels. There were lots of helical angles to work with, which was especially challenging engineering-wise when it came to getting the weighting and rigging right for every different venue.” The Ox Event House team immediately set to work, getting in touch with a structural engineering company it had
Powered by FlippingBook