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XL Video Triggers Maximo Park
As the ‘convergence’ between lighting and video becomes ever more integrated, leading UK rental house XL Video supplied 76 VersaTube LED lighting fixtures and a Catalyst digital media server system to the final leg of Maximo Park’s ‘A Certain Trigger Tour’ tour.
Lighting designer Stevie Marr specified the VersaTubes and the Catalyst, with the Tubes also forming the main architectural element of the performance space upstage of the band and stretching right out to the sides of the stage. The VersaTubes were attached to 18 vertical sections of A-type trussing – four per tube – clamped to the two onstage chords of the truss.
Marr wanted a low level style lighting rig to produce an edgy, suggestive effect matching the harsh rawness the band that personifies their current performance oeuvre.
Marr produced all the video content used to drive the VersaTubes himself, as part of his masters degree in Graphic Design (specialising in Interactive Media) at the Arts Institute of Bournemouth. Students are required to undertake a major project to complete the course, and Marr’s is in “Integrating Video and Lighting in Live Music”. It has seen him take up the challenge of combining two hectic schedules - touring and academic!.
The Maximo Park tour was project managed for XL by Jo Beirne, and Marr comments: “XL Video has always been very supportive of my work. They did a great deal and ensured I had the kit I wanted for the tour.”
The Catalyst is an 8-layer version 3 system, although he was only utilising a single layer. He produced 37 bespoke video clips using Adobe ‘After Effects’, which were stored in the Catalyst occupying a modest 40 Mb of disk space. These were all manually replayed at the appropriate moments, with timecode integration planned as a future development of his Masters project.
The effects he created with the tubes ranged widely, including big, bold single colour sweeps and waves across the line of Tubes to twinkling effects, oscillations, strobing and trippy kaleidoscopic patterns. “Using the Tubes and video input in this way brings so much more breadth, scope and depth to the stage,” he says, adding that having control of both lighting and video mediums also has obvious aesthetic advantages.
He also used After Effects to produce visualisations of the effects the different footage would have when applied to the Tubes, loaded these onto his iPod and showed the band, who could see the VersaTube’s in action with the appropriate effect whilst listening to their songs on the iPod.
XL also supplied technician Neil Ogilvy to look after the kit on the road.
25th October 2006
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