58 APRIL 2020 • WWW.LSIONLINE.COMOO ON TOURON TOUR
but is much more than that. “It’s a very ambitious piece of work
by Squib and Dan,” concludes Davies. “There is great beauty in
this presentation and I’m really enjoying being a part of the
process.”PROJECTION & CONTENT
The nine surfaces of the roller drops are projected upon by six
Panasonic lasers fitted in pairs on a truss out in the house.
There are two in the centre and a pair each side projecting
across stage to their opposite side. With the stage-left and -right
screens at two depths relative to their projectors, how is focus
maintained? “The disguise servers remember the screen
positions once they have been calibrated,” opens Video Design’s
systems man Luke Collins. “That used to be a lengthy process,
but now disguise has developed OmniCal, a system which uses
strategically placed cameras - in this instance, left, centre and
right on the front truss and one on the floor - to triangulate
positions to feed to the server. The cameras take two reference
points at screen bottom, and two further up.”“The set-up of the projection element is quite complex,” he
continues, “but has been simplified by OmniCal and other
functions within disguise. You can model, for example, the
screen deployment for this show in 3D and not only map the
content onto the screens, but also measure luminosity. That
function allowed Video Design to calculate ahead of time the
lowest number of projectors required for a desired image
brightness. That was one of the reasons we spent so much time
testing different configurations in the warehouse. It was the
play-off between levels, focus and the most efficient number of
projectors. That’s also why the projectors are rigged on their
sides - since the screens are all portrait-orientation, putting the
projectors on their sides gives us more pixels.”And the two conflicting focal lengths? “Easier than you think,
thanks to the eye-brain system’s ability to compensate. If you look
closely between the up-stage and mid-stage screens, up-stage is
ever so slightly softer. Yet look from the front row audience position,
and even when the text lyrics are projected it still looks crisp.”Tom Bairstow, creative director and founder of NorthHouse,
comments on developing the show’s content: “We first took the
brief for the show back in October 2019 and commenced work
in December 2019 for rehearsals at the start of February.
Cassius had a strong outline design in mind and Lewis also had
his own ideas. We also input our own ideas into the mix.“This is a very technical show but with a strong artistic direction.
The screen shapes are not conventional, they are often moresquare than rectangular. Because of the show’s technical
ambition, we provided lots of visualisations and suggested
disguise/Notch effects early on. The show features a lot of live
camera effects.”“This is the first time we have worked with Cassius or Lewis and
his team, and everyone has been great,” continues Bairstow.
“Our background as a content provider is strengthened by our
music and design backgrounds. Our pitch for the contract was
detailed - maybe 65% of what we started with was included. The
drive was to keep the focus on the live camera work. Viewed as
a whole, the show resembles an art installation, much more
textual and styled to combine well to the musical content.“From a control point of view, there is a need to find a balance
between the rear LED and projection surfaces; that one element
is very difficult to model in visualisation software; it’s only when
you get into production rehearsals that you can really see the
two media side-by-side. We anticipated accordingly and
managed to achieve the desired result very quickly.” Bairstow
had brought a sizable team to rehearsals for exactly this
function. “There are some pre-filmed clips woven into the live
camera work,” he adds, “not that you would notice as an
audience member, but that allows us to achieve a higher level of
art in presenting the live images.”Bairstow also reveals how certain images were achieved. A clue
comes in a song where live close-ups of Capaldi are on the roller
screens with a diaphanous zebra stripe providing a soft frame.
A singular lightsource upstage of the performer appears within
the image, giving a touch of backlight silhouette to his head.
However, look closer at the rig and you realise no such light
source is in use on the stage system, it’s been pre-filmed.
Subtle, effective, entirely plausible, and very slick.LIGHTING
While Cassius might have determined the lighting design and
the lamp types within it, it falls to Gary Wilson to operate the
system. Wilson has been LD to Capaldi for some time, and how
he got there is instructive. “I started at a little club in Glasgow,
Òran Mór, working mainly for up-and-coming rock bands,” he
explains. “Initially I was studying sound production, but I was
often asked to cover a shift for lighting. That sparked my interest
and I began to get asked to light bands at other venues. At Òran
Mór, I came to know two local companies, CPE Lighting and SM
Lighting. As my contacts grew, I ended up working T in the Park.
While at the festival, I met the manager of the Glasgow Hydro
where we are today, and he offered me a job as house lighting
tech. I stayed for three years. He was a good boss and, although