The show's intense and fluid visuality results from some serious creative chemistry between live video director Blue Leach who is cutting the IMAG mix, lighting designer Davy Sherwin and live visuals director Robin Haddow.
It is Leach's second Snow Patrol tour. "Davy and Robin are really into a fully integrated workflow that unites all departments, and I am very much of that same mindset, so it's a complete joy to be on this," he states.
XL supplied 8 columns of Barco O-Lite LED screen each measuring 13.5 ft high. Additional dynamics include these being rigged on 16 points of a Kinesys automation system, allowing the screen to split into a myriad of different formations and move up and down, bringing numerous structural options - from fragmentation to super-geometry to the performance space. The movement cues also allow lights upstage of the screen to be blasted through.
There are four of XL's Sony D35 operated cameras - two on track-and-dolly in the pit, one hand-held onstage and one with long lens at FOH - plus two robo-cams in the roof trusses. Five mini-cams dotted all over the stage are used very specifically, with another one beside Leach at his FOH mix position - for grabbing and improvising.
He mixes with a GV Kayak switcher. He has two Xander flat screen preview monitors instead of a bank of 9" screens, making a neat, tidy and expedient footprint, and is also using a Medialon touch screen system to add effects quickly and easily onto the camera feeds. Four of these are then sent to Haddow for outputting to the O-lite screen or to any or all of four Barco DML 1200 digital moving lights via three Catalyst digital media servers - also supplied by XL.
Six days of production rehearsals at Wembley Arena produced some long days for Leach, Sherwin and Haddow as they worked the show into shape, an operation also involving Kinesys operator Rupert Reynolds from lighting contractors HSL.
XL's crew includes engineer Gerry Corry, LED tech and camera operator Al Bolland, projectionist and camera operator Dave Rogers, ped camera operator Darren Montague, hand-held operator Jamie Cowlin and screen tech Graham Vinall.
(Jim Evans)
