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XL Video Projects in the Shadows
XL Video supplied hardware and crew for the high profile DJ Shadow tour that utilised a massive projected set as the show’s visual centrepiece. The ground-breaking collection of atmospheric and provocative images are produced by a US-based team of visual artists led by Ben Coles. They are stored on DVDs and replayed live by Shadow via two Pioneer DVJX1’s DVD decks, output to screen via an Edirol v 4 mixer.
XL supplied nine Barco RLM G5i projectors, complete with Barco 0.8:1 wide angle lenses to rear project onto the 24 ft wide set/projection area, which consisted of a top and a bottom screen - the top measuring 6ft high and the bottom 12 ft. The set and the screen surfaces were custom built and sourced via Litestructures.
Three projectors were positioned on the floor, and the other six each rigged in threes on the top and bottom rails of a truss upstage of the screen area.
Technician Richard Stembridge was brought on board by XL. He’s been working with Shadow since the summer, when the release of his seminal ‘The Outsider’ album notched the live production up several gears. The tour was project managed for XL Video UK by Jo Beirne and Phil Mercer, who comments: “We’ve worked with Shadow’s previous tours and it’s always an exciting and challenging project. We were very lucky to get Richie to step in.”
With visuals very much being a major production element, the projectors were chosen because of their cost effectiveness, their wide range of front-end features and overall power-to-value ratio. “They were perfect for the job,” says Stembridge.
One of many features is an internal scan converter that allows very precise editing and scaling of the source material. This greatly aided the line up in this case, where all 9 projectors were used to create a single high-impact image covering the whole screen area. XL also supplied a Folsom Image Pro scan converter for scaling the images before they went into the projectors.
The biggest daily challenge was undoubtedly the line up and the colour balancing of all the projectors within their daily timescale. “With visuals so crucial to the show, there was plenty of pressure,” says Stembridge, adding that “the support and service from XL Video was excellent as always.”
12th January 2007
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