UK company Video Design recently supported the British Summer Time concert season at London’s Hyde Park.
For four years Alex Leinster and his team of video technicians have installed and managed a thousand sq metres of LED screen and camera package, though for this year the equipment supplied by Video Design was slightly expanded.
“We’ve added a 1.1-metre wide vertical wrap around strip to the stage left wing to improve the view from the VIP area,” explained Leinster. Steve Price, Video Director for Mumford & Sons, one of the half dozen acts that headlined this event over the two weekends, said: “The band are very energetic and rock their show, but they are not really a video band in the sense that on tour they don’t have a scrap of LED on stage.
“Obviously with the way the stage is designed for Hyde Park, with LED floor to roof and wing to wing, you are performing within a sort of giant LED cove, so we had to design a show for the screens.” Leinster at Video Design had already established a procedure to ease this process. “We share our D3 Visualiser with all performers,” he said. Even so, Price needed more support.
“I spoke to Alex and Producer Richard Shipman at Video Design and they were really helpful,” the Video Director said. “They said to me ‘once you know what you want we can map it and set it to time code as you need.’ What was really good was they put me in touch with Nils Porrnan, a D3 programmer. He already knew the screen layout having worked on the Kylie show at Hyde Park last year. Nils is based in London, I’m in Devon, so after a few calls I came up and spent a couple of days with him in his studio. He was very easy to work with.”
Price was presented with further pressure on the day however, when, just a couple of hours before the show, the band added a new song to their set. He said: “We needed something and looking around me I saw that there was a perfect blue English summer sky above, dotted with fluffy white clouds. I went up onto the stage and pointed a couple of the mini-cams at the sky on the premise that it would make a good backdrop.
“As performance approached a beautiful crescent moon appeared in the sky so we zoomed in on that and presented it in huge relief across the stage. It looked fantastic. Then during the song two planes flew overhead leaving clear vapour trails, so for a six-minute song segment we were doubly blessed with long lively content that painted a pastoral yet decidedly urban imprint on the stage.”
Leinster concluded: “With four years under our belt I have to say each year gets better and better. From a video perspective this year’s performances were the best we’ve seen.”