The high-profile US rock band have been touring in support of their 2015 album American Beauty / American Psycho, and undertook UK and European Arena shows throughout October, following a series of US dates over the Summer.
A long-time Jands Vista user, Robb took the S3 and D1 combination on the entire tour. The custom setup consisted of the S3 control surface, which was connected to an Apple i7 Mac Mini running the award-winning Vista v2 software, and a Wacom Cintiq Multi Touch pen tablet surface built into a custom case. The system ran with an identical back up and two Vista D1 Playback Processors, which were rack-mounted in a road-case.
"There were a total of 15,496 parameters on the tour," says Robb. "The Vista controlled all the lighting fixtures and elements of the mBox media server that were Art-Net merged within the Time Code Controller. The D1 processors were needed due to the parameter counts, and I have to say they performed amazingly well. They simply sat on the network and worked - that is the beauty of them."
In addition to the massive effects lighting rig, which included dozens of Aryton Magic Panels, Magic Rings and Clay Paky B-Eye in full parameter count modes, the show set included a large LED screen situated high above the front of the action, a huge LED wall at the back, and LED screen strips on the three staircases centre-stage. A variety of media content appeared throughout the show, including live camera feeds and striking visuals designed by Robb in his capacity as production designer, in collaboration with a creative team of animators.
"The set was custom made and faced with 6mm magnetic video tiles," said Robb. "Being able to control all the intensity levels of the mBox map surfaces in a matrix (using Vista's pixel mapper) gave some really cool looks and functionality."
(Jim Evans)
