XL's project manager Phil Mercer is working closely with the tour's production manager Wob Roberts
The camera mix is being crafted by Stefaan 'Smasher' Desmedt and the stage set which includes a back wall video screen and a huge video mapped scenic piece of Williams' head, is designed by the late stage architect Mark Fisher. Artistic director and lighting designer is Willie Williams and the show's producer is Lee Lodge.
The impressive 12.6m high by 7.5m wide 3D head was modelled from a scan of Williams' face and is fully pixel mapped. It is central to the elegant theatrical visuality of the stage, and is fitted with the 46,000 Barco FLX 24 video pixels - the same ones that featured on U2's 360 Tour. These have been integrated by Tait who built the head.
The head pixels were all manually drawn by Smasher using Maya software for the mapping process which is completed in the United Visual Artists (UVA) D3 server. This took around two months of intense work.
XL's crew chief is Stu Heaney and the engineer is Myway. There are 13 video crew in total on the tour, 10 from XL Video and three from Tait (whose Pixel Tablets make up the back wall).
Wob Roberts comments, "Once again, XL has provided us with not only the best video team I've ever worked with ... but also a high spec rig for a reasonable price."
(Jim Evans)
