LONDON — XL Video is continuing the worldwide supply of production video equipment and crew to Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire for the final U.K. and European festival leg of their tour in support of their third album, The Suburbs.
The tour originally kicked off last year in the U.S., project managed for XL by Phil Mercer out of the company’s Los Angeles office. In the U.K. and Europe, Jo Beirne is managing the tour.
Richie Stembridge is the visuals designer and video director. The actual stage screen design is a collaboration between him and LD Susanne Sasic, who also created the set concept.
Onstage, the main screen is constructed from 49 panels of Pixled F15, which for all the indoor shows is covered by a custom silver spandex skin so that it diffuses the image and gives the quality and appearance of a projected movie screen surface.
Above that is their “Marquee” screen, made up from 96 tiles of Pixled F11 built in to 16 of XL’s custom touring frames, which help speed up rigging and de-rigging. This screen is bordered by strips of individual incandescent light bulbs, evoking a classic movie marquee feel.
Around Europe, where they have played some of the more offbeat and unusual festivals, often featuring smaller stages, having a light, highly transportable and very easily rig-able system has been a “huge benefit,” according to Stembridge.
His design incorporates eight Sony BRC 300 robocams — six onstage with wide-angle lenses and two at FOH with tele lenses. There are also five static lipstick cameras positioned around the drum kits and on the keyboard riser.
All 12 camera inputs are fed into two high spec’d Catalyst media servers, with everything running in composite allowing Stembridge to send 12 video inputs into each Catalyst. With 24 layers of control on each server, he can have a layer for each camera at any time plus a layer for playback content.
The Catalysts are triggered from a Hog PC and run live on two playback wings so he has a fader for each camera.
All the playback content was produced by Stembridge, who has now worked with Arcade Fire for four years. Some ideas and suggestions come from the band, but he is also given plenty of creative freedom to suggest and experiment with this, which is a stimulating creative atmosphere in which to work.
Much of the new footage for this section of the tour he filmed on a flip HD camera, which is perfectly suited to the slightly dirty, grainy and dramatic nature of the images onscreen.
Some of the current content has been developed from last year’s tour, combined with new footage and modified to fit the new screen layout. The mix is roughly half cameras/I-Mag and half playback.
“As always, XL is an excellent supplier,” said Stembridge. “The service is brilliant, the crew are great and we are looked after really well – nothing is too much trouble. It’s really also good to have the continuity on a properly international operation when touring the U.S. and Europe.”
For more information, please visit www.xlvideo.tv.
