Lighting and production designer Alex Reardon’s concept for a DJ Avicii’s LE7ELS tour starts with a 17.5-foot-high “head,” but doesn’t end there. Among many other innovations, Reardon also wanted to give Avicii control over the pacing of each track, and have the visuals still match the beat. To achieve this, instead of timecode, the show runs completely off of MIDI Beat Clock (MBC). Although some thought that idea was “bonkers,” he insists that, “if the interface is simple enough, our backup system is strong enough, and the complexity is deep enough, then you can actually let the DJ control the show.”
—For the full story on how this was achieved, see “Video Production Profile” by Vickie Claiborne, PLSN, Aug. 2012, page 36.
