SYDNEY – Sir Elton John’s “All the Hits” world tour traveled with a video setup that included Blackmagic Design’s Micro Studio Camera 4K (pictured here) and Video Assist. They were used for live video feeds and video introductions. Blackmagic Design Teranex Mini, UltraStudio Express and DaVinci Resolve Studio were also used for concert production on the tour, which wrapped up late last year in Sydney, Australia.
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With a career spanning almost 50 years, award winning music legend Elton John is one of the world’s top selling artists of all time. His “All the Hits” tour, which spanned North America, Europe and Oceania for much of 2015, featured performances of hits like “Tiny Dancer” and “Your Song,” as well as iconic songs like “Candle in the Wind” and “Bennie and the Jets” from his highly acclaimed album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.
The video team behind the tour included Video Director John Steer, Drum and Percussion Technician Chris Sobchack and Automation, LED and Programming Technician Lars Kristiansen. John initially chose to use the Micro Studio Camera 4K and Video Assist to help facilitate an electronic press kit and impromptu video messages from Elton to help promote the tour, but the products ended up helping him with so much more.
“I used the Micro Studio Camera 4K as a POV camera to give me more live shots and angles, hence greater video coverage of each show,” said John. “The Video Assist helped me check lines to see if I was getting the correct signal and frequency into our media server. Or I’d use it at the end of a long cable run or to see if a bit of kit was operating correctly. I also used it as a recorder and was able to get ISO recordings.”
He continued, “The Micro Studio Camera 4K is so small and versatile. It’s amazing how much you can push the camera protocols without it being detrimental to the image. I also like the fact that it has interchangeable batteries and that it is so easy to dial in the color temperature and choose what codec you want to record in. The onboard microphone is also very good. And what can I say about the Video Assist, except that it is so versatile and light, you can use it anywhere and anyhow. We toured throughout the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, with shows in seven countries, so it was a Godsend during the show set up.”
The tour’s stage setup also featured an impressive 40 foot computer controlled LED chandelier running a combination video presentation on the custom designed LED video wall that curved up the back of the stage floor. The chandelier was the focal centerpiece of the set, changing formation throughout the show, in sync with the songs being played and their respective lighting schemes. Lars Kristiansen used an UltraStudio Express and two Teranex Mini HDMI to 12G-SDI models with Smart Panels to receive inputs from the cameras and send SDI feeds from the media server out to the video wall and the chandelier.
“The dual output of SDI on the Teranex Mini was very helpful as it allowed me to send the signal to both the video screen and the chandelier simultaneously, and it eliminated the potential need for an SDI distribution amplifier,” said Lars. “The Teranex Minis have also been very reliable and user friendly. The Smart Panel on the front of each unit includes a color display and user controls so we could quickly monitor video and make sure that a signal was received, as well as change settings right from the front of the converter. On top of everything else, they are also very portable, making it easy for us to transport them from country to country.”
For any video on the tour that required post production work, such as video introductions for the openers or messages from Elton to the audience, Chris Sobchack turned to DaVinci Resolve Studio.
“DaVinci Resolve Studio is like the can opener of all editing programs,” Chris said. “I used it to help re edit, resize and recodec bits of our production video content. It has been amazing when we need to do a high quality, quickly produced video introduction or testimonial that must be shot under less than ideal situations. Resolve’s color correction suite is nothing short of miraculous. Because of the intelligent controls and user friendly layout, I was able to do all of this in one program, in less than 10 minutes, in a crowded production office, in a press box on a 15” MacBook Pro, and that is pretty amazing.”
