XL Video Supplies The Maccabees at Ally Pally

XL Video supplied LED screens, cameras, projection, and an Encore screen management system for The Maccabees recent acclaimed gig at London's Alexandra Palace.

Video designer Josh Bagnall presented original visuals for the show. Bagnall's past live music work includes inventive indie acts like Babyshambles and Bloc Party. For the last five years he's worked extensively in feature films and fashion, and so brought a refreshing fusion of ideas from these disciplines to the show, to meet the brief of creating a 'non-conventional' video aesthetic.

He also worked closely with The Maccabees' lighting designer Phil Shaw.

Says XL Project Manager, Paul 'Macca' McAuley, "It was a pleasure working with Josh, who brought a very different approach to the video, which looked amazing and was exactly what the band wanted."

At the back of the stage was a 9m wide by 3m deep section of Pixled F-15 LED screen. This was mirrored each side of stage by two 20' wide by 11' high projection screens, masked off at the top to give a longer, narrower surface and a 1:3 aspect ratio. These were each fed by Barco 20K HDE projectors.

XL also supplied 13 cameras. Five were operated Sony D50s -- positioned two in the pit, one each in the wings stage right and left, with the fifth a hand-held onstage. The hand-held was the most important and active camera in the show and was operated by Larne Poland, who has worked with Bagnall for over 15 years. A further operated camera with long lens was situated to one side, giving Bagnall a different angle with which to work.

Five of the eight Sony BRC-700 robo-cams were focussed on the band members with the other three dotted around the stage. He added various organic effects including lens flare and stretched aspect ratios and also specified a magic DaVE effects machine from XL. From there, the 13 camera sources were all fed into the Encore, to be sized and output to screen.

The show started off with IMAG just on the outside screens. As the show built, layers of visuals were added gradually, with the center screen introduced later in the set.

Bagnall, who has worked on and off with XL Video since he was a teenager says, "I would always use XL as the video supplier. As I knew would be the case, everything -- from the well prepped kit to the crew and all the pre-planning -- was brilliant."