XL Video Bring Keane's Hope And Fears To The Big Screen On UK Tour

XL Video UK has supplied lighting designer Rob Sinclair and production manager Dermot Lynch with a Barco MiTrix screen, plasma screens and cameras for Keane’s UK arena tour.
Keane’s show has featured eight 50 inch plasma screens on stands ‘surrounding’ the band as part of the stage set for some time.
At the end of 2006, Sinclair saw a transparent screen in action at the MTV Awards and immediately realised its creative potential for arenas.
They used 30 columns of MiTrix, making up a 50 foot wide upstage wall with a 24 foot drop which was staggered at different heights to give the full screen a ‘tattered’ look both top and bottom.
The whole MiTrix screen weighs just 2.14 tonnes and is rigged from an A Type truss hung on three motors.
There were eight cameras: one at FOH, one in the pit, one onstage, 4 remote dome cameras and a mini cam dotted around the stage.
The cameras were fed into three V4 Catalyst digital media servers, two running the plasma screens and one running the MiTrix as eight separate inputs. These were all graded, controlled and cut by Sinclair from his Jands Vista console, which was also controlling all the lights.
The same Catalyst systems, supplied by Scenographic (LD Andi Watson’s new company), were used to store and replay pre-recorded footage, graphics, animations and effects.
Special playback content was created for the show by Sinclair and Tom Palliser from Whitehouse Pictures.
Video was used for most of the performance, with the screen really coming into play as a source of drama and excitement during the second half, with huge edgy camera mixes of the band, combined with provocative graphical playback images and animations.
Sinclair is hoping to take the MiTrix to all Keane’s summer headlining show.
(DS/SP)