The Briefing Room

XL Video UK is supplying video equipment production and crew for the Queen & Paul Rodgers tour.

The tour is project managed for XL by Phil Mercer, who comments, “This is the first tour for us that has taken a high definition camera/PPU/recording package for its duration, and so it’s a significant milestone for everybody involved”.

The show’s visuality is clearly defined by an 85 square metre upstage screen, made up from a total of 2500 Barco O-Lite 612 blocks in asymmetrically populated panels with a solid block of O-lite in the centre, giving 1278 x 396 pixels across the whole surface. The screen was designed by Mark Fisher. It weighs 7 tonnes, splits horizontally via a 24-way Kinesys automation system, and also contains 304 ACL bulbs, which are under control of Lighting.

XL is supplying six GV LDK 8000 cameras, 2 positioned at front-of-house, 2 on hot-heads in the pit, one focussed on drummer Roger Taylor and the final one hand-held onstage.

Show content has been produced by Aubrey Powell (Po) of Hypgnosis, playback is via a Catalyst digital media server and is output to screen by live director/vision mixer Stuart Rowsell.

Rowsell cuts the mix using a GV Kayak switcher, engineers are Wolfgang Schram and Dave Rogers; there are 6 ISO and TX HDCam records of each show.

The touring camera operators are Saria Ofogba, Sacha Moore and Gordon Davies, and LED techs are Stef van Besien and Chris Isaccson.

For the first show in Kharkov, Ukraine a second HD PPU and 7 extra cameras were integrated into the touring system for a shoot, directed by David Mallett, for Serpent Productions which was broadcast live on Ukrainian TV.