Green Hippo

Green Hippo's VideoMapper on Leftfield tour

Green Hippo's VideoMapper on Leftfield tour

After a 10 year hiatus, they are back and rocking the crowds. Rockness, Pohada, SuperBock, Lokerse and Creamfields to name but a few of the festivals you could catch Leftfield at in summer 2010.

The band, originally formed by DJs Paul Daley and Neil Barnes, had their first major success in the early 90’s, forging a path for hosts of other dance artists to emerge in the years since.

Returning with DJ Neil Barnes only, plus the original band members and vocalists, the band lined-up about a dozen dates this summer with more later this year, which has them thrilling audiences with their intensely pounding beats and equally stunning video and lighting conception.

Video Director Ben Miles, responsible for the visual arrangement, and the technical crew accomplished some spectacular events.

The content was designed by Oli Sorenson for a screen in three pyramid sections pointing downstage, making six screen parts available to stretch content across. Ben comments: “This is some of the best content I have ever seen. It is different for each song, yet has an ongoing theme running through each track. Oli really worked with the music as well as the triangle sections of the screens to bend and warp the perception of angles. The visuals really wouldn’t be anything without this.�

At both Rockness Festival in Scotland and Lokerse in Belgium, Leftfield rocked the crowds with their pyramid stage design by Jamie Thompson, amazing content by Oli Sorenson and live execution by Ben Miles. Using F-LED screens with a resolution of 1440x480 Ben had to re-scale the content from its native resolution of 960x480 to 1440x720.

While this set-up was used for several of this summer’s dates, including Rockness; on a few occasions it was changed to a two or three panel set-up. At Pohada, Slovakia the band worked their magic in front of a large centre screen supported by a pair of low-res screens either side, while at SuperBock SuperRock in Lisbon two screens either side of the stage were used.

As the first few dates of the tour were complete it became clear that the screen configurations were going to change regularly. During a chance visit to Green Hippo Ben looked at using VideoMapper to solve these issues. Although, at that time, Hippotizer’s VideoMapper component was still in Beta stage, Green Hippo had worked with Ben enough to know he could work with us and implement the software successfully.

“We had a different screen at every show and so I had to scale the content accordingly. Where the picture was split over separate screens or different panels it was important to try and retain the correct ratio and also to keep the edges of the six sections in the content at any edges in the new screens.�

In order to aligned everything perfectly and create a smooth flow in Oli’s content, Ben made excellent use of virtual pixel gaps created with our VideoMapper component:

“At some shows I used a true gap, measured to the physical gap between the screens, while at others I reduced the gap in VideoMapper to increase the content on screen yet still retaining the idea that the three screen sections were not connected. This is a key feature of VideoMapper that is easy to vary live with a bit of left and right shift to see what works.�

Using two Hippotizer HD media servers, most of the time Ben used one to run the content while the other machine was running ZooKeeper, both being synched using MIDI timecode. In a few venues the second machine was used to reconfigure the content output resolution, so this could be sent to OB trucks and side screens.

Ben also used a Behringer Controller to drive the MiStrip content and MIDIsport boxes for the MTC input, thus controlling his timelines for the shows.

At most festivals Ben used one output at a resolution of 1024x768. Spain’s Benicassim Festival demanded one output at 1600x1200 for the F-LED processor, while Rockness was the only event to make use of two Hippotizer Outputs at 1600x1200 and 1024x768.

In order to make the re-scaling and lining-up of content that little bit easier Ben designed his own test grids, one at 960x480 for the majority of the shows plus some specific grids, including the one for the Pohada stage with the large screen grid at 720x480 and the smaller low-res screens at 128x256.

“Some shows I had lots of information beforehand and so I prepared a test grid and the VideoMap in advance. [...] At other shows where I didn’t get the screen specs until we arrived on site I had to work with VideoMapper a bit more to get everything to line up.�

Using VideoMapper allowed Ben to adjust his content to the differing screens at the shows, making his timelines work flawlessly and creating truly memorable events for Leftfield’s first live performances in a decade.

“Having the main screen in the top left of the output and my MiStrip output in the bottom right worked excellently with VideoMapper as you can accurately move pips around within your total pixel count and easily work out increases in size with a visual representation. I was glad to be completely in control of any scaling instead of giving the decision to whichever LED processor/scanner/LED technician was at the show [...].�

 

Ben Miles: info@mixedemotionslondon.com or www.mixedemotionslondon.com

Oli Sorenson: http://www.olisorenson.com/