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MAN VS MACHINE Crew goes robotic for one of the world’s biggest stars
PHIL MEAD IS a video director at Colonel Tom Touring (CTT) with the enviable job of going on the road with Ed Sheeran. His big break came most unexpectedly, when he was working as head of electrics at Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, back in 2010. “A show designer by the name of Mark Cunniffe came into the theatre and asked me if I wanted to go on tour and work on concerts instead,” Mead recalls. “At that point, I’d spent six years at the theatre. The time had come to explore – and further my opportunities.” Having worked as a lighting tech on several tours for the likes of Stevie Wonder and Sir Elton John, Mead was offered Sheeran’s + (Plus) Tour in 2011. Cunniffe wanted to introduce video and lighting; Mead was charged with looking after both. DOING THE MATHS The team needed to raise its game for the next project, because the job involved producing video for one of the world’s best- selling artists, on the big screens arranged all around him. “The + Tour design became heavily dominated by video screens, so we took on
a video director with some cameras to do it justice,” he adds. “I was the head of video/ engineer on that tour.” On the following campaign, the ÷ Tour , the show designer used a video installation that wrapped around Sheeran. This started in arenas, but was designed to scale up to larger venues. “We introduced IMAG screens and scaled up the height of the stage installation for stadiums,” says Mead. However, it was on Sheeran’s current Mathematics Tour that the team behind the scenes decided to push the boundaries even further. This time, not only did they challenge the skills of the people involved, but pushed the abilities of the technology at their disposal to the limit. “The tour production team didn’t want to see any camera operators out front,” he says. “Everything had to be streamlined, to blend in and give the audience a clean “Mead was tasked with looking after video and lighting for Ed Sheeran”
THE A TEAM Panasonic’s UE150 (left) proved a perfect partner for Mead and his crew, filming Sheeran with precision movement and beautiful 4K capture
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