Chili Peppers' drummer Chad Smith, bassist Flea, guitarist John Frusciante and singer Anthony Kiedis are backed by four Barco D7 screens on trolleys and an 80ft wide VersaTube wall which extends to the venue's roof then out over the floor via fingers stretching to the front of house. The 760 VersaTubes display a changing palette of lighting treatments and an array of video content, including animation, flickering CG imagery, IMAG and band footage.
"With the grandMA, we can adjust IMAG on the fly with the buttons on the desk," says Scott Holthaus, along with Grier Govorko, the show's designers from 40wattlabs. "We can distort images for an effect or go black and white from a rescan camera or supplement the performance with odd video clips."
The grandMA also controls a Vista Systems Spyder, which "makes switching more precise and frees the director to cut cameras and not cut Spyder so the content on the D7 screens change in perfect synchronisation with their movements," Holthaus explains.
All of the show's lighting is also controlled through the grandMA. The extensive lighting inventory, from Nashville-based Premier Global Production Company, includes 80 Mac 2K washes, 13 x 5K Syncrolites, 50 x 3K Atomic Strobes, 50 x 3K Atomic Colour Changers, 8 x Robert Juliat 2.5K Ivanhoe spots with CXI changers, and 4 x 2K Bambinos.
(Jim Evans)
