Catalyst On James Blunt Tour

A Catalyst V 4 digital media server is at the core of Paul Normandale's visual design for the 2008 James Blunt world tour.
It's the first time Catalyst has been used on James Blunt. It replaces a previous digital media server and is being operated on tour by lighting director Glen Johnson, who is also running lights and overseeing all the design aspects of the show.
The tour was conceived for American arenas and has been scaled accordingly for the European section. The design had a regal theme using Blunt's family coat of arms, along with the monkey symbolism of the album and the desire to progress the show in a series of scenes.
In addition to the Catalyst, they have a PixelMAD system also supplied by UK Catalyst dealer Projected Image Digital running as a stand alone machine, which is supplying content – via 13 DMX universes – to the ColorWeb which flies in and out during the show. Being transparent, this is also utilised for some leftfield 3D effects with video running on the surface and lighting punching through from behind.
Also feeding into the Catalyst at FOH - via two LFG Input cards with 4 composite inputs on each card - are 8 lipstick cameras positioned around the stage focussed on the band members plus one robotic camera.
The scaling and compression facilities of both Catalyst and PixelMAD have been instrumental to making it possible to run the show in the manner, and images have to be sized and re-sized constantly and consistently through the set.
Catalyst generally gives them a massive amount of flexibility for running video and images for the show.
The first song has all 8 cameras projected across the screen – for a very clean camera mix - via 2 Barco FLM projectors supplied by XL Video – while on the 9th layer Johnson uses one feed to overlay Blunt’s head across the whole area.
For the final section and the anthemic disco song '1973' the footage is a funky psychedelisation of unseen off-cuts from the promo video which have been solarised and negatived in the Catalyst, with fluorescent retro colours applied
Johnson us using a WholeHog 3 console for control, and all lighting hardware for the tour is supplied by Lite Alternative. Sound is supplied by Skan, and the James Blunt tour is scheduled to continue into early 2009.
(DS/JM)