As Described Choose Roland Video Products For The Portishead World Tour

The tour, which started back in June with a week of rehearsals in Bristol, has just completed its European leg and at the end of September will go to the USA followed by South America before finally ending up in Australasia at the end of the year.

Specialising in providing bespoke video solutions for international live events, as well as festivals, documentaries and corporate work, Co-Director of As Described, Adam Seaman had also worked on the previous Portishead tour back in 2008. On that occasion, a lot more hardware was required for the video mix, taking up a lot of space and time to configure. 

This time around, As Described had all the features they needed with the Roland products and with fellow Co-Director Jim Horsfield working with the Resolume VJ software system set up meant they could design a rig with a much smaller footprint – reducing the size from four racks to two - with obvious benefits in the ease of setup and breakdown.

The control rig for each show was built into two 19” racks, with one rack holding the LVS-800 which was used as the main camera cutting mixer. With 8 video inputs and two independent outputs for multi screen applications the LVS-800 also features DSK (Downstream Keyer) which enables graphics or title overlay to be set to appear downstream of the mix. 

A laptop loaded with the Resolume VJ software was connected to the LVS-800 via one of the two RGB inputs adding extra content and allowing John to play video clips, adjust tempo and apply extra effects in real time.

The V-8 8 Channel Video mixer was used as a sub-mixer to the LVS-800 allowing the effects processor of the V-8 to provide the exact stylistic ‘feel’ on the output that John Minton and Adam wanted.

With over 150 video effects, the V-8 can provide this with a level of instantaneous control that cannot be achieved using software alone.  The output to the LED screen for the Portishead tour was intended to provide PAL definition and both the V-8 and the LVS-800 were perfect to achieve this. Measuring 14m across, the LED screen used on this leg of the tour provided a back drop to the entire stage area. 

For a video monitoring solution, As Described chose the Roland MVS-12 Multi viewer/switcher connected to the LVS-800 as up to 12 SD video signals could be displayed to a single RGB monitor on 15-pin analogue or HDMI. For the Portishead tour each camera on the stage was connected into the MVS-12 and the multi-view capability meant that only one screen was required – not one screen for each input. 

The MVS-12 not only saved time and space for As Described but meant that everything John and Adam needed was right in front of them, the two mixers and multi-viewer taking up less than one metre in width.

The second 19” rack comprised different analog effects which were also used as part of the show. These effects included a feedback back camera linked to a modified H&V hold CRT monitor for video glitching, speakers with mirrors attached, and a custom oscilloscope on the output of the monitor desk which displayed a waveform of the singer’s voice and the band instruments. As each track had its own individual video mix, the combination of the camera feeds and effects provided new options at hand every time.

There are few artists where the visual element plays such an important part of the live shows as it does with Portishead and for Roland video products to be chosen shows their professional standing.