of himself, which we’re able to create real-time on stage; it’s been great to
work with Ryan to push the boundaries and we’re always looking to tr y out
new ideas. Ever y show has its own characteristics.”
The use of Notch IMAG effects shaped the overall aesthetics of the show
by building off both pre-rendered content and Dalgleish’s lighting looks.
This in turn created more connection to the artist while still maintaining
a visually cohesive look with a lot of field-based effects. Sheppard said:
“There were a lot of moments in the show where we needed a slow-moving,
almost trippy effect, and image field emitters helped us achieve this.”
For higher-energy moments, Sheppard used multiple glitch effects,
particle systems set up in a variety of ways and fractal noise generators
with a colour ramp to give some looks the colourful ASTROWORLD feel.
“Some effects for the O2 show were developed from scratch based on
what we had learned from the festival run for specific moments,” he said.
“However, a large portion of the effects from the festival run still remained
in the show.”
This ended up being almost a 50/50 split between content and IMAG
effects. Although there was some pre rendered content from Notch in
the show as well, as Sheppard described. “The biggest challenge is that
it’s simply a live environment. All elements of the show are changing
constantly, and we need to be able to react to blown-out camera shots or
not having a shot at all ver y quickly. The solution for this just comes down
to a good camera director and shader.”
Another challenge for the creatives was simply keeping up with Travis
Scott as he could play any track in any order. “We dealt with this by
programming and busking the entire show through sock puppet on an MA
Lighting grandMA2 console. This allowed us the flexibility to switch quickly
to whatever look we needed at any moment,” he explained.
The video was run manually through a pair of disguise gx 2 media
ser vers. “We use disguise gx 2s on almost all of our shows,” Sheppard
declared. “Having the ability to render notch blocks natively, playbackpre-rendered content from the same system along with the 3D previs when
reviewing looks with a client is unparalleled.
Remarkably, the team’s entire European run was operated entirely on
locally sourced ser vers. “Tr ying to source the same hardware and ensure
consistency in ever y countr y would have been ver y difficult with another
system,” Sheppard concluded.CAROUSEL
Creative Technology (CT) was brought in a week and a half prior to the show,
to provide a mix of video and custom set pieces. The company’s Project
Manager, Pat Dore, wound the clocks back: “We had an idea of what the
production team wanted to achieve with the look and visual LED elements
of both stages,” he recalled.
The CT team made up of 16 on-site crew, then worked back from that,
collating ever ything required to build a fully automated, three-tier carousel
on the main stage. The rear back wall centre screen was made up of INFiLED
5.9, 18.5m x 10.5m LED panels, the three-sided SR cube was ROE Visual CB5
18 tiles x 2.5 LED tiles, and the SR cube was ROE Visual CB5 13 tiles x 3.5 LED
tiles.
The carousel was flown via Kinesys, to move up and down and boasted
20 ROE Visual CB5 20 tiles on the top and 40 ROE Visual CB5 40 tiles on the
bottom. The catwalk and thrust comprised a VISS NX7 LED floor display,
while left and right IMAG projection came in the shape of two 20ft x 14ft
projection screens, with Panasonic DZ21K projectors on each side.
CT supplied a Ross Carbonite 4k PPU, four Sony HSE 300 cameras –
one at FOH, two long lens cameras at the side of the arena, and a wireless
camera that roamed between the B-stage and main stage – in addition to a
fixed camera in the pit. A trio of Agile Robo cameras were housed on-stage
to provide a variety of shots.
“Most of the camera shots were filtered through Notch because Travis
doesn’t have a set list and performs on the fly. It’s fascinating to watch theTRAVIS SCOTT