Continuing their work with some of the world’s highest profile EDM artists, XL Video
worked with DJ/Producer Bassnectar to light up Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks
Amphitheatre with an abundance of LED, as well as supply control systems and
crew for two shows in late May.

This year marks the 5th year Bassnectar has played at the renowned outdoor venue
and Production Manager, Marc Immerman, contacted XL Video to ensure the video
for the show would match the spectacular surroundings.

XL Video’s Touring Projects Director, Gareth Jeanne worked with Bassnectar’s team
to specify over 300 tiles of XL’s ROE Visual MC-7 high resolution LED for the multi-
surface stage design.

Mimicking the shrinking perspective of the venue, LED columns were arranged each
2 tiles wide, and 9, 8, 7 and 6 tiles high on each side of the stage.

Surrounding the performers, a 16×8 tile LED screen was flown upstage and topped
with a convex curved LED header flown above the stage.

XL Video built a custom dolly for Bassnectar’s curved LED DJ booth which allowed it
to be easily wheeled into place for the headliner’s set.

With a venue of this size and arrangement, it was important that the control system
created a seamless link between front of house, stage control and the on-stage
riser.

XL Video’s team, led by on-site Project Manager Norvin Maloney and Crew Chief Eric
Escujuri installed a solution using Lightware MODEX TX/RX kits which transferred
the signals from the client’s own media servers at front of house. These were
coupled with a Lightware 16×16 Matrix which fed the LED processors.

To enable Bassnectar, his VJ, Max Chang from V Squared Labs and his backline
engineer to easily monitor the on-screen content, XL Video utilized a Barco
ImagePRO-II scaler/converter to pull out a region of interest on the back screen
which was then converted to SDi and transmitted to displays on the DJ riser, and to
the team at front-of-house.

This ensured all the crew were completely in sync with the visuals and the music
across the huge venue. This was backed with Fiber networking, using Cisco
Managed Network Switches between stage control, front of house and the DJ riser.

Gareth Jeanne commented: “Red Rocks is an iconic venue, but it does also present
some interesting challenges for live video production. Our crew – Eric Escujuri,
Julian Ruiz and Darsak Patel – more than met the challenge; collaborating with
Bassnectar’s team through four days of rehearsals in Denver and then installing our
smart control set-up and outdoor LED screens at Red Rocks. The resulting shows
delighted the assembled audience across both nights!’