Disguise drives Kiss to the End of the Road
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The larger-than-life tour is a massive production featuring lasers, floating drum kits, fire, pyrotechnics and more. disguise gx2 media servers are powering a key part of the large-scale video for the tour, which features 17 LED video pods above the stage that move in and out via automated winches, a massive upstage LED video wall, and two side screens.
“Kiss have an incredible visual legacy spanning multiple decades and multiple generations of fans,” says Danny Firpo, CEO of All of it Now. “Both Robert Long and Sooner Routhier from the SRAE team were incredible in their level of knowledge of the band’s catalogue on both a musical and visual level, and they spent days going through footage of the band from 1973 to the present. As a farewell tour, the content serves as a nostalgic retrospective, an environmental backdrop or as a dynamic lighting element while still being modular enough to make changes on the road to account for new songs and new content.”
Firpo notes: “What SRAE wanted to do with this show was use the content as an extension of the band’s stage presence without overshadowing them. This is why IMAG is such an important part of the show - because without all the bells and whistles, the band still puts on a pretty incredible show all by themselves.”
disguise’s gx 2 server was chosen for its Notch integration capabilities, Firpo reports. “We’re not using a lot of video outputs for the show, but we have a lot of moments in the show where video needs to respond to audio, video or lighting data. The gx 2 gives us the graphics firepower we need to render some pretty complex 3D environments in realtime. The system was able to render out Notch IMAG effects effortlessly, and the linking of camera feeds to Notch scenes in disguise is simple and intuitive.”
The year-long End of the Road World Tour called for a robust media server, according to Firpo. “The durability of the disguise hardware platform was an important consideration as once the tour starts, it doesn’t stop for a long time,” he says. “The schedule of the tour also creates a situation where there’s not a lot of time for troubleshooting. So it was important that we’d had a good experience with the gx 2 on previous tours.
“Since we’re moving through European, Asian and American markets we needed a hardware solution that could work across all voltages, frame rates and environments,” he adds. “Besides arenas and stadiums, we’ve also had outdoor festival shows for the European leg and, so far, the servers have dealt with the elements well.”
(Jim Evans)
