The tour features an integrated show performed by both S Club Juniors and Seniors, with the Juniors’ high-action set kick-starting the evening’s entertainment. The live camera mix is directed by Blue Leach, working with an XL team of five. Leach was also involved in creating most of the Seniors’ video insert material, spending three weeks shooting new footage in the studio and on location. To keep the show’s narrative rolling along between songs, Leach also created the ‘Matrix Mother’, an imposing Blade Runner-inspired head which appears on the rear screens.
The show’s pre-recorded video material is stored on two Doremi hard drives and is sent to four different-sized Unitek LED screens, flown upstage. Leach has video graphics inputs from a RADlite visual manipulation system at his disposal, mixed via the Icon Show Controller lighting desk operated by lighting programmer/operator Eneas Macintosh. The RADlite’s colourful kaleidoscopic patterns are switched to a strip of Westerhagen low-res LED panels running along the bottom of the elevated section of the set, and occasionally also sent to the high-res LED screens.
The cameras are four Sony D35s with various lenses, plus one of XL Video’s new Polecams, located stage right, allowing unobtrusive camera access onstage and up to the higher parts of the set. The live camera relay goes into two 15 x 20ft back-projected side screens, fed by two Barco G10 ELM projectors.
Blink TV produced the video content for the tour, including a Harry Potter-style opening sequence for the Juniors created by Lydia Baker, Blink’s animation specialist, and video for the main band’s medley sequence. In addition to being very involved with the pre-recorded elements of the show created by Blink, Leach also collaborated with Josh Bagnall from Fishpot Productions to create new content for S Club.
Rigging specialists Summit Steel were on board as rigging co-ordinators, as well as being the designers and suppliers of the spectacular moving catwalk system that lowers over the audience. Constructed entirely of standard 30cm Thomas truss, it flies in at the relevant moment and the stairs hinge down to the stage for the band to access. Motion control is provided by a Stage One NextQ system that’s been integrated with a load cell system to allow auto-monitoring of the weight on all of its 17 points individually.
In terms of rigging hardware, the show contains a total of 68 points, 20 of which are sub-hung, and of which Summit has supplied 46, with LSD providing their own for lighting. Summit has also supplied the kit to fly the four LED screens supplied by XL, and also a mid-stage truss with tabs and an electric kabuki drop (supplied by Blackout), plus a large set of front tabs.
(Ruth Rossington)
