STAGING

Leading UK lighting rental company HSL is supplying lighting, a 26-point Kinesys automation system.

The imaginative force behind the show includes Davy Sherwin (lighting & visuals designer), Robin Haddow (live visuals director) and video director Blue Leach. Thy work as one, the aim of their seamless teamwork to ensure that all the lighting, video, visuals and movement cues contrast, compliment, match and juxtapose in complete harmony.

HSL and project manager Mike Oates are renewing their acquaintance with the band after working with them throughout 2007. Oates says, “It’s just brilliant to be involved on a show that looks this good. An incredible amount of hard work, ideas, imagination and intelligence has gone into making it work, and the end results speak for themselves!”

Sherwin’s design start point was running a few ideas by the band, and coming up with a general LED and moving light vibe that he felt suited the mood and music of the new album. That concept extended to the metalwork layout, and he chose to have 5 raked upstage/downstage trusses referencing back to the sun rays of the album title.

These are hinged down at the upstage end, allowing them to be flown in and close up to the performance space for the subtler and more intimate moments.

Upstage, behind 8 columns of Barco O-lite video screen, are 5 lighting pods each continuing 4 Vari*Lite 3500 Wash fixtures and 2 Martin Professional Atomic Colours. These pods are also rigged on Kinesys motors so they can glide in and out during the show for “powerful old skool ACL effects” explains Sherwin.

Lighting fixtures are distributed across the fingers and on the floor. He’s using 34 Robe ColorWash 2500E ATs – 30 in the rig and 4 on the downstage corners of stage for powerful side lighting. Twenty V*L 3000 Spots are positioned in the air with a further 8 upstage on the floor, used for moody low level beam and gobo effects cutting through the band and backline.

Twenty i-Pix BB4s  - 4 per finger - are lined up along the underside of each finger, following the line of the truss. These provide an alternative source for washing the stage. Sherwin particularly likes the colour range and the quality of the pastels they produce. Five BB16 blinders are positioned on the downstage ends of the fingers – used for mega-bright audience blinding effects.

In addition to the 10 Atomics on the pods, there are another 20 dotted around the rig and 6 upstage on the floor, along with five 4-cell Moles with scrollers which add a bright tungsten source that pushes out from behind the backline.

Side lighting is further supplemented with three 2-lites a side, complete with black-wrap ‘eyelids’ keeping them tightly focussed on illuminating the front floor line.

The upstage truss has a kabuki drop that reveals a white trevira fabric projection surface, used for the final of 3 sections of a show-stopping end-of-gig gag.

The front truss consists of a shallow box. On the front rail (nearest stage) is another white trevira fabric kabuki drop which comes in during the encore break. The four Robert Juliat Ivanhoe 2.5K follow spots are also located on this box, for a tight and neat path to the stage with minimum overspill.

The show was a very close collaboration between Sherwin, Haddow and Blue from the outset. Once the design was finalised and before rehearsals, Sherwin started programming on an ESP Vision visualiser system. When he’d finished, recorded each song onto hard drive, he rendered it as a QuickTime movie and sent it to Leach, so when Leach and Haddow were creating and programming the screen looks, colours and effects, they could mirror and reference Sherwin’s lighting cues.

For control, HSL is supplying three WholeHog 3 consoles. One, complete with USB wing, is operated by Sherwin, the other by Haddow, triggering 3 Catalyst media servers running all the video playback content and sending all video sources to screens or to 4 Barco digital moving lights, and the third is a backup.

The Kinesys system (which also lifts the 8 columns of O-Lite up and down)  is piloted by Rupert Reynolds, a complete aficionado of its Vector  control software, who makes a breeze of getting the most complex effects to look effortless.

Also onboard is another very experienced crew from HSL – featuring Ian Lomas, Tim Oliver, Rob Starksfield, Tom Wright and Andy Hilton, chief’d by Johnny Harper.

VIDEO

XL Video UK in conjunction with Blink TV supplied LED screen, digital lighting, projection, cameras, control and crew, and the tour  is the first in the world to feature Barco’s DLM 1200 digital moving lights, of which XL has supplied four.

The show’s intense and fluid visuality results from some serious creative chemistry between live video director Blue Leach (winner of the 2009 TPi Award for Video Director of the Year) who is cutting the IMAG mix, lighting designer Davy Sherwin and live visuals director Robin Haddow.

It’s Leach’s second Snow Patrol tour, “Davy and Robin are really into a fully integrated workflow that unites all departments, and I am very much of that same mindset, so it’s a complete joy to be on this,” he states.

This modus operandi brings huge vitality and flair to the equation, producing an environment where everyone can be experimental, innovative and daring. Once Sherwin had the initial lighting scenes programmed for each song, he rendered his ESP Vision visualiser files as QuickTime movies and sent them to Leach so he could think about matching and contrasting IMAG cues to the lighting for each song. Throughout the process, a harmonious balance was maintained between the mediums, with stunning results that see screens strobing, flashing and changing image along with lights, with colour treatments overlaid on the video,   etc.

XL Video’s project managers Phil Mercer and Jo Beirne comment, “You know when Blue is involved it’s going to look interesting and different. The way he, Davy and Robin have developed the ‘bigger picture’ is the result of fervent imagination and crafting”.

XL supplied 8 columns of Barco O-Lite LED screen each measuring 13.5 ft high. Additional dynamics include these being rigged on 16 points of a Kinesys automation system, allowing the screen to split into a myriad of different formations and move up and down, bringing numerous structural options – from fragmentation to super-geometry to the performance space. The movement cues also allow lights upstage of the screen to be blasted through.

There are 4 of XL’s Sony D35 operated cameras – two on track-and-dolly in the pit, one hand-held onstage and one with long lens at FOH - plus 2 robo-cams in the roof trusses. Five mini-cams dotted all over the stage are used very specifically, with another one beside Leach at his FOH mix position – for grabbing and improvising!

He mixes with a GV Kayak switcher. It was a no-brainer that FOH would be the best position for this - as he needed to be in close proximity to Sherwin and Haddow rather than concealed in some dark under-stage corner!

He has 2 Xander flat screen preview monitors instead of a bank of 9” screens, making a neat, tidy and expedient footprint, and is also using a Medialon touch screen system to add effects quickly and easily onto the camera feeds. Four of these are then sent to Haddow for outputting to the O-lite screen or to any or all of 4 Barco DML 1200 digital moving lights via 3 Catalyst digital media servers – also supplied by XL.

A spectacular end-of-show gag comes in the form of a specially commissioned 16 minute animated mini-movie produced by Splinter films, who developed a treatment received from Leach based on original ideas from lead singer Gary Lightbody. This accompanies the 3 part song “The Lightening Strikes” and is projected sequentially onto 2 trevira cloth surfaces that are kabuki’d in – one off the front truss and one right upstage - and also onto the O-lite.

The projection system for this – and for a short Etch-o-graph style show intro - is a doubled up pair of Barco FLM 20s stationed at FOH, and the movie – along with all the other playback footage used in the show, is stored in the Catalysts.

Some of the camera feeds sent to Haddow are pre-treated by Leach and some are manipulated in the Catalyst – before Haddow sends to the designated destination. The DML 1200s are used at certain points to project video and images around the arena or onto the audience and more unusual and unexpected places.

Six days of production rehearsals at Wembley Arena produced some long days for Leach, Sherwin and Haddow as they worked the show into shape, an operation also involving Kinesys operator Rupert Reynolds from lighting contractors HSL.

XL’s crew includes engineer Gerry Corry, LED tech and camera operator Al Bolland, projectionist and camera operator Dave Rogers, ped camera operator Darren Montague, hand-held operator Jamie Cowlin and screen tech Graham Vinall.