XL Video UK supplied video playback and production to London’s Tower Music Festival for promoters AEG.
This is the first year XL Video UK was invited to participate in the event, which was production-managed by Debbie Bray. The Festival returned to the historic Tower of London for its third year. The stage was located in what was once the Tower’s moat, taking advantage of its natural amphitheatre-like shape.
The 2007 Tower Festival featured an eclectic mix of artists from the worlds of rock, pop, and opera spread over two weeks of shows. Highlights included The Gipsy Kings, Bryan Ferry, Joe Cocker, Katherine Jenkins, Seal, Elvis Costello, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Bryn Terfel, James Morrison, and Dave Stewart—the latter complete with a 30 piece orchestra and special guests.
XL Video UK’s project manager Tim Riley comments, “It was a pleasure to work in such an amazing location with some great acts and industry names involved. Everything went very smoothly despite the incredibly difficult access.”
Access was one of the biggest challenges of the event, with everything having to be craned into the moat from the street.
XL Video UK sourced a 25-tile, 15mm pixel pitch outdoor Sony screen measuring 4.8 x 3.6 meters and hung in the Serious Stages roof structure about 40 feet in front of the stage. It was configured as five columns, and flown on three one-ton motors directly off the structure.
The screen offered IMAG to sections 2 and 3 of three seating banks, including the tiered bleachers at the back.
Nick Fry was brought onboard as live video director, and XL Video UK supplied one of their standard four-camera PPUs. Two cameras were positioned in the pit, one was hand-held onstage, and the fourth was a lipstick camera attached to the drum kit.
Everything went extremely smoothly for the XL Video UK team, which was crew chiefed by Graham Sharp. He was joined by Gerrard Corry (system engineering) and camera operators Andy Warwick and Aaron Busk.
Summit Steel coordinated the production rigging requirements for all departments and supplied all necessary rigging equipment to fly for the video screen and lighting trusses (supplied by PRG) totaling 20 points. This was overseen by Jon Bray and included three crew members for the build and break-down periods and a production rigger on hand for the run of shows.