XL Video Has Designs On The Scissor Sisters

XL Video recently supplied projection, Catalyst digital media servers, a 4-camera PPU and crew for the Scissor Sisters recent arena shows.
The main challenge for the projection was that the images were being beamed onto three elegant but quirkily shaped, custom-made video screens that were also curved, and attached to a circular truss at the top. This was part of the stage set created by Marc Brickman, who also designed the lighting.
XL supplied a total of 8 Christie 20K projectors, six of which were rear and side projected (with 1.1 lenses), with another two out front, giving them three main points of projection. Positioning of the Christie projectors was absolutely crucial. The projectors also had to be hung on their sides to achieve the correct aspect ratio for the screen and to get the optimum amount of pixels onscreen.
Customised playback footage was created by cinematographer Seth Kirby and Marc Brickman, and programmed into the Catalyst by Richard Turner, working closely with High Davies-Webb who operated the show system via a WholeHog 2 console. All the masking to make the content fit the screens, plus keystone correction, was done within Catalyst, which also took care of flipping the images 90 degrees so the projections came out correctly onscreen.
They used a serious “Pimp Daddy” Catalyst computer for the task, which took 4 SDI inputs from the PPU, allowing them to send different images to the various different points of projection - all masked appropriately. Christie’s “Warp” software was used to adjust the images for the curvature of the screen.
Kirby’s footage was filmed in NTSC at 29.97 frames per second and a serious amount of calculation and programming was undertaken by Turner and Davies-Webb to persuade the Catalyst computer to playback at that speed (it would normally favour a 60 Hz refresh rate).
Eight songs used playback footage while another 12 utilised IMAG. The Scissor Sisters are well known preferring unconventional IMAG, so apart from the idiosyncratic shape and look of the screens, video director Phil Woodhead cut an interesting mix using different angles and original combinations. Cameras were located with one at FOH, two in the pit and one hand-held onstage, and Woodhead used one of XL’s GV Kayak vision mixers. The system was engineered by Graham Holiwill.
Liquid projection – mysterious, organic and rare - added an additional layer of dynamism to the visual mix. This was created by Seth Kirby in consultation with liquid projection guru Peter Wynne Wilson – whose experience with the art-form dates back to the 1960s and Pink Floyd.
(CL/LC)