XL's project managers were again Chris Saunders and Paul Wood. Saunders co-ordinated the cameras and control side, while Paul Wood managed the screen elements and specials. Both worked closely with the event's technical production manager Mick Kluczynski and his team from MJK Productions, lighting designer Al Gurdon, set designer Nicoline Refsing from Stufish and The Brits TV production.
The central screen measured 8.4m high and 6m wide, and the Punk Stage screen on stage left was 18m wide by 4.6m high, both screens were made from Lighthouse R16 16mm resolution LED panels.
XL also supplied two flown 20ft by 11ft relay screens each side of the stage in the auditorium, using Barco FLM R18 HD projectors.
The PPU was based around a Grass Valley HD Kayak mixer and GV LDK 8000 HD Cameras, three of which XL supplied for the show. Ten further HD feeds from the broadcasters, directed by Hamish Hamilton via facilities company CTV, were fed into the XL system and used for the live stage IMAG mixes, cut by Chris Hilson. These were in turn fed onto the centre stage screen, Punk Stage screen and relay screens via one of XL's Barco Encore control systems, programmed and operated by Richard Turner who, amongst many things - pixel-mapped and formatted all the artist-supplied images and content that was used in the show.
The control system additionally received VT play-ins from the broadcasters and integrated custom playback content into the show, including graphics, Awards nominations packages and announcements, all produced by Hello Charlie.
Custom playback material and the artists' content was stored on four dual channel Grass Valley Turbo hard drives and two Catalyst digital media servers and cued via the Barco Event Controller.
For Kylie's performance, XL supplied 300 Element Labs VersaTubes mounted on a special 12m wide by 5m high frame. Content was via the main XL Video control system.
Rihanna had 70 VersaTubes attached to a 4-strutted pyramid structure. Video content for this was stored on one of XL's Catalyst media servers and operated via the main lighting console.
For Mark Ronson, XL supplied 32 panels of Barco I12 LED screen made up into two sections each 3.6m wide by 900 mm high, which lined the front of the riser for his band and orchestra. Video content was again fed into the LED panels via the main video control.
(Jim Evans)
