News

XL Video at Hyde Park

Posted on 12/08/2010

XL Video supplied video production for a series of shows in London's Hyde Park this summer spanning the 3 day Hard Rock Calling and Wireless festivals, with a Kings of Leon show in the middle, all promoted by Live Nation.
Enjoying glorious weather, it was the 8th year that XL has supplied these central London events, which were once again project managed for them by Chris Saunders, working with an XL crew of 15.
Hard Rock Calling
The headline acts were a blend of classic rock genres represented by Pearl Jam, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. XL supplied a 5 camera PPU "house" IMAG system which was directed by Ruary MacPhie using a GV Kayak, and this stayed in place for the whole run of shows.
The cameras were positioned 2 at FOH with long lenses, 2 in the pit on track-and-dolly and the 5th mounted on a remote pan/tilt head above the stage, all of which combined to give a selection of dynamic and interesting angles and shots.
Stevie Wonder brought in his touring video production - also supplied by XL - for Saturday night, and director Matt Askem's mix took feeds from some of the house cameras in addition his own.
On the Sunday, Paul McCartney's production used the XL house camera system, which was directed by Paul Becher and installed their own screens - portrait format for the left and right sides, with an onstage backdrop of LED.
XL also installed a Barco B10 mobile truck screen into the VIP Hard Rock Cafe area, and a Lighthouse R7 screen in the public Hard Rock Cafe area at the other end of the Park.
Kings of Leon
XL has also been on tour with Kings of Leon throughout the summer. For this show, they used their own touring production, complete with Pixled F11 backdrop screen fed via a media server, plus their own cameras, directed by Phil Woodhead. The XL house cameras were used to produce the side screen IMAG cut.
Wireless
This wrapped up the run of Hyde Park shows in style with 3 days headlined by Pink, LCD Soundsystem and Jay-Z.
Pink has been on tour for the last year with another full HD video production from XL, and utilized her full touring video system for this show, including a large Pixled F15 screen upstage. They are touring 5 Thompson LDK8000 Cameras positioned FOH, in the pit, hand held and unusually for a tour, on a Jimmy Jib operated by Gary Tepper, all this brought together in a lively Pink-tastic mix directed by Larne Poland.
Jay-Z's performance also featured a touring XL Video rig, including columns of the ever popular Pixled F15.
Additionally for Wireless, Saunders and his team supplied a projection system for DJ Shadow on the second stage.
A series of plasma screens from XL were dotted around all over site, switching between sporting action from the World Cup football in South Africa and championship tennis from Wimbledon and the various shows. These were fed via a microwave link from XL's production portacabin backstage.
All the shows were recorded for TV by Visions Mobile, directed by Tim van Someren (utilising some of the XL camera feeds plus their own.) "All the various companies involved in the different aspects of the overall video production across the 12 days and 3 events worked seamlessly together, and it was another very successful Hyde Park experience, It’s great to be a part of what has become a pivotal event in the summer calendar," says Saunders.
As well as all this, XL provided a standard playback system for commercials and interstitial VTs in addition to facilitating Tuborg's 'Beat The Intro' competition.