Renowned for his quirky approach to his performances, the true Williams fan will not be disappointed by the artist's spectacular stage set this year, which was designed by Mark Fisher and built by Brilliant Stages. It features a futuristic stage backed by columns of Barco's DLite 10 LED displays, as well as a scissor-lift, supplied by Star Hire (Event Services), which raises Williams and his team of dancers into the air as part of the performance.
The show-stopping columns of Barco LED were supplied by XL Video via Blink TV. Each column is seven metres high and although hung from a railing that surrounds the stage, moves up and down, as well as coming together to form one giant videowall. Additionally, each column also rotates 360 degrees on its own axis, as well as moving from its starting position behind the artist to a position on the front-end of the rail. The live video director for the show is Ruary MacPhie who is utilizing siz of XL's new Sony E10 broadcast cameras, and mixing from XL's OB truck.
The screen automation system was designed and built by Kinesys in close collaboration with Brilliant Stages. Starting in the downstage position butted up as a full block, the screen opens dramatically to reveal Williams hanging upside down, suspended by his feet, in a dramatic moment of operatic proportions!
This massive project (video equipment is the heaviest department, weighing in at 35 tonnes) is being overseen by XL Video director Des Fallon, who also worked on the last Robbie Williams tour in 2001, alongside production manager Wob Roberts and LD Liz Berry - both back on-board for this tour. The show's artistic director is Lee Lodge who produced the video inserts working with Bristol-based BDH. Blink TV called in video 'scientist' Richard Turner as their consultant programmer to transfer these onto three Doremi hard drives. For the show, these are controlled by Dataton, fired from a timecode signal sent by the band's musical director.
With the screen panels changing positions as they track around stage (so panel 1 upstage may become panel 4 downstage, for instance), Turner pixel mapped (and effectively reversed) the images to ensure they appear correctly on whichever columns of the screen they are being sent to, achieved by each column being driven by a separate screen processor.
Liz Berry's lighting design is equally impressive. The rig, supplied by VLPS, includes Vari-Lite's new VL3000 in the spec, 32 of them to be precise. Just under 300 further Vari-Lite fixtures - a combination of VL2416s, VL4s, VL5s and VL6Cs - feature in Berry's design, as do eight Studio Due City Colors, 30 Molefay 8-Lites and several 6-lamp bars. There's also 32 of Wybron's 8-Lite Coloram scrollers, in addition to Strong and Lycian followspots, and four Pani projectors.
Berry is running the two Virtuoso desks controlling the entire rig, synch'd together with two operators, which means that the dimming, data and distro does not have to divide down along the lines of the two desks, creating a more efficient system . . . and possibly a world first.
With massive critical acclaim after the initial show reviews, the tour is currently riding high in Europe, before returning to the UK in August for three sold-out dates at Knebworth, each in front of 125,000 people.
(Ruth Rossington)
