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XL Video Excels on A-Ha
XL Video UK supplied lighting and visual designer Andy Hurst with video equipment for A-Ha’s recent UK arena tour, in an interesting design merging both mediums into a tasteful eye-collage.
Hurst worked with video specialist Richard Shipman and XL’s project managers Paul Wood and Des Fallon to get the video elements exactly as he wanted. From the outset, he intended using video as a lightsource blended together with the lighting cues and visuality. LED tech for the tour was Andy Tonks.
The tour’s starting point was a massive show in Oslo, Norway (the band’s home country) to celebrate the City’s Centenary. With 120,000 attending, it was the largest show in Norway to date, and featured a 10-camera DVD shoot with lots of video onstage. Hurst wanted to continue the video theme on a scaled down version for the arena tour.
He also wanted to separate the show into three distinct acts that could be “unfolded” throughout the set, and so divided the video into three physically different ‘phases’.
The set kicked off with projections from a Barco R18 projector rigged from the front truss, beaming onto a silver drape hanging off the mid-stage truss.
Hurst’s design incorporated four main ‘media’ trusses containing lighting and video – front, mid, back, plus and a curved truss between the mid and back that was sub-hung with five 3-metre trusses.
Each of these sub-trusses was rigged with three moving lights and three panels of Unitek V9 LED screen. They were automated via an Ibex motor control system, which enabled very dynamic looks to be created by shifting the five trusses into different shapes and positions. As this happened, the fascias of each piece of truss effectively became moving ‘bars’ of video.
The rear truss was used to make up a completely different video look. It was also curved, and rigged as far to the back wall as possible each night, greatly enhancing the sense of depth onstage.
The rear truss was rigged with five evenly spaced drop-hangs, each consisting of three LED video panels, a metre apart, with a moving light filling the gaps between each one. This created a total of 30 video panels in a symmetric but broken up look. This video wall ‘trick’ was saved for the last 4 songs of the set ….. giving it enormous hi-energy impact.
The wall was particularly effective for producing movement via a single image repeated across all 30 screens, achieved to perfection with the dancing ‘Bond Girl’ in ‘The Living Daylights’.
All video content was stored and run via an ArKaos system operated by Shipman, while Hurst ran the lightshow from a WholeHog II console, with a PixelDrive for his 15 PixelLine LED battens. Video ran for 16 songs of the set. All content was created by Hurst and Shipman using archive and library sources as their base material, which they then edited, manipulated and effected into footage appropriate for the show.
12th January 2006
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