Yeast Culture was formed by Nick Hillel and Marc Silver six years ago. They create music visuals, art installations, films and documentaries. Two years ago, Cullum saw a Yeast performance and asked them to work with him.
XL's project manager Paul Wood says, "Nick has produced a very intense yet intimate look that truly enhances the Jamie Cullum live experience." Cullum does not have a set list and the shows are completely random, so all the mixing is done live and their video operation set up has to be extremely flexible and instantly accessible. The Yeast team consists of Hillel mixing and two camera operators - Kelly Sandall and Niken Corrigan.
The pre-recorded footage consists of a series of loops, all stored on a laptop. They were created by Hillel using Adobe After Effects and Director and are recalled and replayed live via a Korg Kaoss Pad Entrancer that allows the visual manipulation of images in real-time with fingertip control. The live cameras are also fed through the Kaoss pad so they can be manipulated in time to the music. The three Sanyo XP50 projectors are backstage behind the screens.
Hillel also uses a Panasonic MX50 mixer and a 16-way matrix switcher to switch any source to any destination . It's an older piece of kit but Hillel likes it because it works well for their camera material which is recorded in black & white to give it a stark but filmic quality. "The MX50 also has a great feature enabling the layering of shots in a very specific way - that later models don't have," he says.
(Jim Evans)
