News

XL Video gets Festive in The Park

Posted on 27/07/2009

XL Video supplied an HD camera and playback system plus assorted video extras for several acts appearing at Live Nation's three Hyde Park summer festival events - Hard Rock Calling, Blur and Wireless - which all ran consecutively in London's most central greenfield location.

This was project managed by Chris Saunders for XL, assisted by Zoe Minter. The artist line up included the Killers, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen (Hard Rock Calling) and Basement Jaxx and Kanye West, who headlined the two Wireless shows concluding the run.

Saunders has worked on the event for the last 5 years, ever since it was launched by Live Nation. "It was great to be working with the Live Nation team again," he says, "The setting and the variety of the music makes it very special, everything went smoothly for us and we all relished the chance to enjoy glorious weather!"

For the main stage, XL supplied 4 x LDK 8000 cameras, 2 positioned at FOH with 86:1 lenses, plus a track and dolly system in the pit with two more cameras which could also be converted into hand-helds onstage, according to the needs of the individual production. The idea was to keep it as flexible as possible to deal with the dynamic range of headline artists.

A GV Kayak switcher was supplied for control, and the daily production of the live IMAG mix was directed by Ruary MacPhie.

For Bruce Springsteens’ performance at the Hard Rock event, Chris Hilsom directed both XL and Visions cameras for a VH1 recording produced from XL's control room, throughout the run XL interfaced and worked closely with the Visions OB unit under the control of Live Nation TV’s Mike Kaufman.

For Blur's two shows, XL took feeds from the Visions truck and sent 4 camera feeds to Visions to be recorded as part of a Pulse Films recording of the shows. "It was a good example of TV and live screen operations working seamlessly side-by-side," comments Saunders.

Band extras included supplying Lighthouse R7 screen for Basement Jaxx, Stealth screen for The Killers and PIXLED F-11 screen for Kanye West.
The XL crew also took care of processing and outputting-to-screen all the public information and health & safety announcements throughout the run of shows.

The Hyde Park events were the latest in XL's busy summer schedule, which has also included the Isle of Wight and Download festivals, alongside touring work with U2, Depeche Mode, Oasis, Madonna, Take That, The Killers, the Kings of Leon and a host of others.