XL Video renewed its productive long term working relationship with Massive
Attack, supplying LED screens and d3 media servers for the band’s recent
festival tour which featured a video concept co-designed by UVA and Icarus
Wilson-Wright in conjunction with the band’s 3D.

The band have been developing their own distinctive text based style of video
content ever since first incorporating the visual medium into their show well over
a decade ago, and XL has worked with them for most of that time. This aesthetic
also gives them the opportunity to translate text into the local languages for
each show, a simple move that makes a massive impact wherever they play.

This tour was project managed for XL by Phil Mercer and Steve Ackein.

The initial brief for the tour’s video design were that it should be flexible and
have high impact for a mix of festivals and own show headliners. It was
important for the look the band wanted that the screen be semi-transparent
and through-lit from behind to bring another spacial dimension to the stage.

Wilson-Wright explains that they decided the video product most suited to their
needs was XL’s new Radiant MC-7T black-face 7mm resolution – this was chosen
for its good resolution, light weight and because it’s very dark when off.

Each screen measured 4.2 metres wide by 1.2 metres high offering 560 x 160
pixels. The system was designed to be configured as a standard six-screen
format on two levels, expandable up to nine screens on three levels if needed.

The concept also had motion involved, in that the screens were designed to
independently rotate to produce different architecture and shapes behind the
band as the performance unfolded. This rotation also had to be controlled via
the media server.

XL came up with an axle based system driven by stepper motors offering 180
degrees of travel controlled via an interface by the d3 media server, allowing
movement and content could be synched.

Each axle was attached to the screen support structures by two pins, and two
different sets of support structures were toured for maximum flexibility
depending on the venue or gig – one based on a scissor mechanism to take the
three screens, and an aluminium option which utilised motors to lift the louvers.

Wilson-Wright ran the d3 server from FOH. They took in timecode there and sent
the signal down a DVI fibre link to the screen processors onstage, and via a
MOXA box, data was distributed to the screens.

The show’s video content was newly commissioned by UVA, with Wilson-Wright
looking after re-editing some of the “heritage’ items from the band’s extensive
digital archive and also creating some new material. All the time he worked in
close collaboration with lighting designer Tim Oliver to optimise the different live
show looks with lighting and the screen louvers as they moved into different
positions.

UVA created a custom grid software module for the d3, onto which text and
graphics can be placed and then scaled and sized accordingly maintaining
complete pixel integrity without any aliasing or blurring. This is a central to the
visuality of Massive Attack’s show video, together with the ability for multi-
lingual translations of text including Cyrillic and Chinese characters. With bi and
tri-lingual shows the norm, current local and world events and issues can be
fully integrated and communicated to the audience in the context of the
performance.

The band have been presenting their show like this for some time, but with the
clever and considered use of visuals, each Massive Attack performance becomes
so much more than a band playing onstage … it’s a powerful, psychological
immersion that takes “a show’ into a deeper more emotional and experimental
headspace.