For the seventh consecutive year, XL Video supplied screens, projection, an HD PPU and control for the 2009 Brit Awards which were presented by comedians Mathew Horne and James Corden, together with Pop Princess Kylie Minogue.
Staged at Earls Court, London, and broadcast live on ITV 1, the event was jointly project managed for XL by Chris Saunders and Paul Wood. Saunders co-ordinated the cameras and control, while Wood managed the screens and specials.
As Saunders clocked up his 15th Brits, sadly it was also his first not working with long standing production manager Mick Kluczynski, who died suddenly 10 days earlier. Saunders and Wood both worked closely with the MJK Productions' technical team, with lighting designer Al Gurdon and set designer Nicoline Refsing from Stufish, plus The Brits TV production.
“The Brits was a great tribute to Mick's amazing technical, practical and communication skills and his ability to see ‘the big picture',” comments Saunders, “He was the first person to have wanted ‘the show to go on', but it's definitely not the same without him!”
The centre onstage screen elements consisted of 80 square metres of 11mm F-LED, a product that has been specially developed by and for XL, and is available exclusively as a rental item from the Award-winning company.
A further 30 square metres of Lighthouse 7mm was utilized for the presenter screen.
An integral element of the stage design was a pyramid shaped projection backdrop, which was fed by 12 Christie S20+ projectors all rigged and focused at different angles. Getting these lined up correctly was a major global challenge for the XL crew. The individual projector outputs were aligned and soft edged together to produce one large image.
Four Catalyst media servers were programmed and run by Richard Turner via a WholeHog II console. In addition, the playback set up featured 2 Doremi hard drives, a Virtual VTR and two stills stores. Outputs from all of these, two GV LDK 8000 HD cameras also supplied by XL as part of the IMAG mix, together with 7 broadcast camera feeds were all processed via a Barco Encore multi-screen control system. This was operated by James Morden who sent the relevant content to screens.
All the pre-recorded video playback material was supplied by the production. The majority was created by Hello Charlie, with Onedotzero supplying special footage for the truly show-stopping Pet Shop Boys' performance that closed the live action. This followed their collection of the Outstanding Contribution to Music Performance Award.
One of XL's HD PPUs was at the core of the live screen IMAG mix cut by Ollie Bartlett. This was based around a Grass Valley HD Kayak mixer, fed by the 2 XL cameras plus another 7 HD feeds supplied from the CTV OB directed by Phil Heyes.
To further facilitate audience enjoyment of the IMAG, XL supplied two flown side projection screens that were fed by Barco ELMs, and also inserted PiP IMAG into the pyramid projection system.
XL's 20 person crew included LED crew chief Paul “PJ” Maddock-Jones and projectionist Warren Galt.