The assignment was project-managed by XL Events’ Robin Evans, who worked with technical director David Mulcahy and XL’s IT guru Ian Woodall.
The project began with a discussion between Coldplay’s production manager Wob Roberts and XL Video director Des Fallon some months previously.
“The initial inspiration came from Coldplay’s creative director Phil Harvey after seeing XL’s mapping of the Ralph Lauren building in London,” said Roberts. “Once the team had demoed the concept to all of us, the band confirmed that they wanted to go ahead with it as a show-stopping effect for this year’s Glasto.”
Concepts for the projection were first shown to the Coldplay team using live server feeds into Cast’s WYSIWIG software, which allowed a 3D visualization of how the projection might look. As the project progressed a 1:50 scale model of the Pyramid Stage provided a “real” surface for test visuals.
“The challenges were many – from where to locate the projectors to dealing with mapping the video to the unique shape of the stage, to designing a super-stable data network,” Evans said.
Mulcahy added, “As the Pyramid Stage had never been used in this way before, there were numerous unknowns needing to be incorporated into the projection calculations – from the actual response of the stage’s skin surfaces to the projection, though to the levels of ambient light that would be present. We had to make allowances for all these factors and others to ensure that the final projections would be bright enough and have contrast ratios that would work on camera.”
Twenty-two high powered projectors were installed in three locations, along with a fully redundant Ethernet network, and the designers and crew needed to undergo meticulous masking, mapping and programming in four Pandora’s Box media servers to make the video content fit the surfaces. Philip Ward of Universal Everything produced the custom-created material.
The final projector tower positions were decided after close collaboration between the XL team and Dick Tee, Glastonbury’s production manager. To get the basic parameters established, archival aerial photos and video footage were studied. Festival owner Michael Eavis had to give his personal consent, and Tee had to undertake some serious health and safety risk assessments before any of the projector platforms could be built. The stage left structure was right in the middle of a public area and the main thoroughfare across the Pyramid section of the site for egress from the John Peel stage.
The stage right tower was positioned in the BBC compound 100 meters away from the stage. It measured 6 by 8 by 12 meters high and was loaded with nine Barco FLM HD20 projectors, all of which were overlaid to produce one image packing 175,000 ANSI Lumens.
The stage left tower was a repeat of this, but 120 meters away from the Pyramid Stage. This tower was offset, so the projection trajectory had to be warped in the Pandora’s Box running that side of the effect, so it appeared straight on to the side of the stage.
The FOH tower was 105 meters away behind the main sound/lighting platform, also 6 by 8 meters wide/deep with an extra 3 meters of height at 15 meters. It housed four Barco FLM R22s, emitting approximately 84,000 ANSI lumens above the top canopy at the front of the Pyramid stage.
A portacabin set up on stage right housed the control gear, which used SMPTE timecode from Coldplay’s backline ProTools system. This timecode then fed the band’s touring Catalyst media server system (operated by Ben Miles) and the Pandoras Box Media Server Manager to ensure that the complete system was in sync. A fully redundant server solution was used to provide a “hot” backup, and both systems ran locked to the SMPTE code.
All the video content was mapped and shaped exactly to the Pyramid’s covers from CAD drawings. David Mulcahy supplied 2D texture maps derived from 3D Studio in advance to Philip Ward so he could also tailor the footage and its resolution.
The task of designing stable and reliable networking in the middle of a field fell to Ian Woodall, and consumed nearly 5 kilometers of Cat-5 Ethernet cable. A full redundancy ring with automatic fall-over was integrated into the system.
The network enabled two vital technical elements – synching the media servers in each projection tower, and giving the ability to talk to the projectors remotely, which made the line up process hugely efficient, saving endless amounts of scaling towers hundreds of meters apart. Being the Summer Solstice, they needed to maximize the four hours of true darkness available each night.
A “Network” pre rig started two weeks before the festival, and the XL team moved onsite a full week in advance to finish everything off once the towers were built. The projector line up was completed in overnight sessions and demonstrated to Coldplay’s management on the Wednesday night before their performance.
“It was an ambitious project and a lot of hard work as well as hugely exciting and rewarding,” said Evans. “The finished result with band, lasers and an ecstatic crowd made it a real ‘once in a lifetime’ moment.”
A minute after the end of the Coldplay show, a holding slide was projected as a tribute to the late Des Fallon, XL Video director, project manager and production industry maverick, who died tragically and suddenly in May
For more information, please visit www.xlvideo.tv.
Photos by Jack Banks
