The video walls served more than an aesthetic function. Given the large size of the crowds at this event (the 17th most popular jazz festival in the US and the biggest in New England) and the layout of the park, which was not designed specifically for large concerts, the video walls provided many of the 70,000 fans who turned out with their best view of the performances on stage.
Darren Lussier of Image Production Services positioned two 10 x 10 tile walls on either side of the stage and a third all made of 8 x 16 tile wall out "in the field" for added viewing. "We used the third video wall as a delay screen," he elaborated. "The pixel pitch and viewing angle of the panels made it easier for fans to see the artists from anywhere in the surrounding area, which was very helpful considering that the crowds were so large a lot of people couldn't get close to the stage."
The brightness of the panels allowed fans to see clear crisp images even during the afternoon. "They had sun on them all day long and performed flawlessly," said Lussier. "We had two cameras feeding the panels' content from the stage, and the images we displayed really connected the crowd to the artists."
Lussier fed the panels' content with a Roland V-800HD multi formatted video switch using an HD-SDI signal. "All the images were fed to the video walls very smoothly," he said. "Setting up and tearing down the walls was also easy. The festival went off without a hitch."
Now in its 25th year, the three-day festival served up an eclectic mix of jazz, from the Latin sounds of the Bronx Conexi
