News

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

Posted on 08/10/2011

XL Video’s Los Angeles MD Phil Mercer talks about current business and technology trends on the other side of the Atlantic.


It’s 9pm on a crisp autumnal English evening as The Industry Insider makes a Skype call to Phil Mercer, the managing director of XL Video’s Los Angeles office.

Inevitably, the banter kicks off with the Great British obsession with the weather, and how the Californian sunshine has boosted his Vitamin D levels since he made his Transatlantic move from XL’s Hemel Hempstead HQ in April 2009 after five years on the project management team.

But the comparisons don’t end there. “While the UK video market has remained stable, the US market has been quite turbulent,” reports Mercer. “It appeared to peak around 2008-9 but we have all experienced a dip as a result of the economy and the arrival of some new players. As a result, the work has been more evenly spread out and a number of companies have slightly downscaled their operations to cut overheads.

“It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out over the next couple of years because the pressure will no doubt be on these newer companies to make worthwhile profits. Some of them don’t own their own equipment — they hire it in to meet project specifications. Whether or not that’s a healthy long-term solution remains to be seen. At the end of the day, good track records, continuous investment in new technology and the personal touch count for a lot, and XL ticks all of those boxes.”

XL’s American business is driven by two main offices. Mercer’s L.A. base concentrates on concert touring accounts either originated in the UK or the US, the most recent being Deadmau5, Kings Of Leon, Coldplay, Muse, Arcade Fire, Chris Brown, Steve Aoki, Nicki Minaj, Swedish House Mafia, Tiësto (for his monthly Las Vegas shows at the The Joint), Roger Daltrey, Bryan Ferry, Adele, The Script,
The Australian Pink Floyd and original Floyd founder Roger Waters, whose cutting-edge The Wall Live tour is set to return to the States next year with a larger, outdoor presentation, designed specifically for baseball stadiums.

“We’re going to be projecting over 140 yards,” Waters told Rolling Stone. “We’ve done light tests and Fenway Park and Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium just to see what the ambient light is like. And it’s fine. It works. We’ve taken part of the Wall and the projectors into those three places.” Prepare to be stunned.

In parallel with the constant evolution of video technology, the demands of clients have been changing, according to Mercer, whose colleagues include project manager Dave Hyslop, chief engineer David Vega, account executive Bob Magee, CFO Cary Tan and Bethanie Bass from the projects team.

“Everybody has been taking a good look at projection again since the Roger Waters tour because the results achieved with that medium have been so incredible,” says Mercer. “People are now beginning to re-investigate its creative potential even though the idea of actually using it may not always go beyond the concept stage. The latest HD projectors are smaller and brighter, and with clever mapping you can create an outstanding, wide screen image.

“Whereas two years ago you might have seen a 60ft x 30ft high resolution LED backdrop as a standard at major artist gigs, that’s not so common at the moment.

With budgets squeezed across the industry, show designers are tending to specify a smaller LED surface area but use it more creatively, and the results are generally more interesting to the eye.

“Commercially, however, it’s a more even playing field because we’re seeing more of the smaller-scale tours carrying a video element which was very rare until recently.

“That’s certainly true in the DJ touring market where these artists are incorporating creative LED in their shows. Deadmau5 is a good example. Two years ago, just after I arrived in L.A., he was using seven panels of Pixled F-7 and now he’s touring with a huge amount of video. We’ve built F-11 screen into custom cube objects which is something that few companies would get involved with but the results are spectacular.

“Deadmau5 [real name Joel Zimmerman] is regarded in the DJ world as the standard to aspire to and he’s highlighted the importance of video for this kind of show, which tends to carry little else in the way of production because most of the venues have good in-house audio systems. It’s been interesting to see how dependency on large- scale video production has shifted from a lot of the arena bands to this area.”

Run by Greg Gardner, XL’s other main office is located in Atlanta. Here, the focus is on corporate, sport and special events, the highest profile being MTV’s Video Music Awards — an annual project for XL and Bob Magee — which took place this year at the Nokia Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles on August 28, featuring live performances by Lady Gaga (with Queen’s Brian May), Jay-Z & Kanye West, Adele, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars.

German production designer Florian Weider, who has created the sets for numerous MTV events, injected the theme of time travel for this year’s design, described in the press as “a cross between an alien landing ship, the floor of a 1970s disco and the baddest midnight laser-light show ever”. Weider himself explained that “the whole set is pretty much a video surface [which] helps us to get different looks and put different colours on [the screens]”.

Says Mercer: “The video elements that Florian used at August’s event served a decorative, eye candy purpose for the cameras rather than being live content-driven.

For XL it was interesting because it was the first show that used our ‘U2 pixels’ for anything other than U2’s 360° tour. The screen that U2 used consisted of over 500,000 transformable Barco FLX RGB LED pixels that were mounted on flexfoil [a flexible PCB] and then glued to aluminium to form a flexible ‘honeycomb’.

“We purchased the product for the U2 tour but inevitably we wanted to find other applications for it, so when we discovered that Florian’s very curved VMA set needed to incorporate LED pixels that would follow those curves, the U2 pixels were perfect because they can undulate in two different planes and be able to both change colour and be mapped correctly. They were built into custom set pieces that were made for this one-off purpose. Prior to the show, we spent several weeks in construction mode at our L.A. scenic shop building these pixels into custom set pieces that were made for this one-off purpose.”

Atlanta has a long-standing, exclusive relationship with the United States Tennis Association to supply screen hardware for a number of tournaments, and it also furnishes the requirements of several theatre and comedy productions. “Generally, we tend to support shows with West End roots that are coming to the States for tours or limited-run residencies,” states Mercer. “Large-scale comedy shows are just as successful and lucrative here as they are in Britain. Ricky Gervais is one of the more well-known performers who have benefitted from XL’s contributions, and we expect to do more work in that market.”

Whilst the L.A. office specialises in concert touring, its Atlanta team put its weight behind several US festivals during 2011 including Coachella, where it supplied screens, custom cameras and additional video elements for headlining acts Kings Of Leon and Arcade Fire. Other summer events supported by XL this year included Outside Lands in San Francisco, Austin City Limits, the R&B-styled Essence Festival in New Orleans during July and Lollapalooza.

In July, Belgian venture capital provider Gimv invested 19 million euros in XL Video. The investment consisted of both a capital increase, giving XL a solid base for further growth, and also the acquisition of existing shares. The Gimv-XL fund acquired a 47% interest in XL Video, making it the largest shareholder, with the remaining shares remaining with management and other investors. This major boost will have a significant impact on the operation of every XL office, not least in America. “The two main things that I expect to see as a result of GIMV’s recent investment will be adding some new faces to our team here in L.A. and making some significant investments in new equipment to keep us ahead of game,” says Mercer.

“The last couple of years have been seriously interesting for me,” he adds. “Arriving in L.A. and not really knowing anyone was a tough start, but I’ve now got to grips with the technicalities of American football and the business is in good shape with plenty of opportunities ahead.”