After a few days down in Brussels, band and crew rolled into the Couleur Cafe festival, located right in the heart of Brussels city.

The main stage took the form of a giant boom box with circular screens flanking the stage. No LED screen at the back of the stage for this show, content was cut with cameras to the side screens which was tough work considering the interesting shape!

Next stop, Russia!

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After a day off in Vilnius, Lithuania we had our second show of the tour at the city's ice rink.

The venue was the first opportunity lighting operator Theo Cox has had to program the show in complete darkness which was a welcome bonus.

Seal went down a treat with the crowd who seemed to love the classics and welcome his more recent material.

Next stop is Brussels where some of the crew have a break before our next show on Sunday at the Couleur Cafe Festival.

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Tonight was the first show of Seal's Summer 2011 European tour in Parnu, Estonia. With a packed crowd under the late evening sun, his performance was full of energy and the band played with true finesse.

Basic Monkey's new touring Catalyst system integrated seamlessly with the LED screen provided by Eventech and was triggered by the lighting console, operated by Theo Cox.

Theo is ably covering for show lighting designer Sean Burke who will be joining the tour further down the line. Tony Fagan is managing contact on site with local lighting suppliers.

Next stop is Vilnius, Lithuania by plane after a morning to relax in the beautiful town of Parnu.

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Straight off a plane and to the rehearsal studios to meet the team.

First impressions of Estonia from the back of the minibus are far from expectations. Tallinn is a modern, fast developing and picturesque city. I was expecting to see stereotypical ex Eastern Bloc but instead was greeted by something very Scandinavian.

Beautiful old buildings surrounded by new, smart developments sit either side tree lined streets. The view out to the Baltic sea on this lovely, warm summer day is stunning although Tallinn being the busy port that it is, means an unfortunate smattering of container ships.

Today is a chance for introductions as I wait for my kit to arrive.

James

Basic Monkey has been asked to supply our new dual touring Catalyst system for Seal's Summer European tour starting tomorrow.

James will be accompanying the tour, looking after the system and interfacing with locally provided LED screens and projectors.

The tour starts in Estonia, working back across Europe down towards Portugal with a few days in Russia in between, finishing at the end of July in Poland.

Our new dual touring system is completely self contained, only requiring power and screen outputs to be connected. UPS, monitor, processing, multi-viewer, DAs and monitor are all within the rack to reduce truck space and enable swift load-ins.

Keep checking back for updates over the next 5 weeks!

Samsung today launched two new products, the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the Olympic park in Barcelona.

The event marks the start of the Mobile World Congress in the city and as such the media guests expect to be impressed. Jack Morton Worldwide certainly delivered on these expectations again.

Following on from last year's success with 360 degree projection, it was decided to use projection again but on to varied surfaces in both texture and depth.

The main screen was 17.5m wide and 6.25m high, rear projected using 4x Barco HD20s in a 2x way edge blend. Flanking this were two front projected 'media façades' which had blocks at differing depths. 2x Barco R22 machines on their sides were mounted on a tower at front of house to project onto these.

For the opening sequence a voile curtain was brought across the entire stage, backed by a black Kabuki drop. This was also projected from the front, using Barco HD20s.

As the guests walked in, the Samsung Unpacked logo looped on the voile, followed by two teaser videos. After a countdown intro the Kabuki drops and the cloudy sky parts slowly as the voile curtain opens with carefully matched speed. Tied in with this, the main screen reveals an image with the product name.

The main show was divided into 4x stories, each with an opening video and product presentation graphics matched to the presenter's words. These were cued from script and designed to flow seamlessly.

Driving all the projectors were 3x XL Video Catalyst machines and Basic Monkey's 'Gorilla' Catalyst system output the 8 channels of audio used for the orchestral opening sequence along with the stereo audio for the rest of the show.

All the media servers were fed into a DVI matrix and were all inter-changeable in the event of one failing.

The show was triggered by our Jands Vista S3 console, making use of the carefully adjustable timing and transitions.

James programmed the show using content provided by Sangwha and Remedia, working closely with them to ensure a faithful representation of their concepts.

A show for invited guests is tomorrow following the same format as today but with a few alterations.

We're all wondering what next year's show will entail...

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Tonight was the 2010 Wella International Trend Vision Awards show at Halle Freyssinet, Paris which saw competitors and guests from all over the world show off and discuss the big new hairstyles and colours for the next 12 months. The event was produced by Jack Morton Worldwide who brought together a huge number of suppliers to create a very successful show.

The event was built in three 'acts', the first being a demonstration of Wella's big new trends of 2011, 'Passionista', 'Lumina', 'Glamazon' and 'Polaris'. The afternoon act consisted of two competitions, 'Young Talent' and 'Colour', both of which are very prestigious awards to receive and can lead to great things for the winners.

In the evening, the guests and competitors were treated to dinner and entertainment from Diversity, The Noisettes and Soul Symphony.

The day show catwalk area consisted of 4x HD side screens and one 16m x 7m edge blended main screen. The main screen at the back of the catwalk had a revolving box at it's lower centre to allow four different apertures for the models to emerge from, each matching the style of the trend. In the afternoon, this box was opened up to allow a DJ to perform for the competitions.

XL Video were brought in to realise the video requirements on site, including fixed, jib and mobile cameras, LED screen, projection and control systems.

The trend content was designed and created by Knifedge with additional stings and animated name straps created by Jamie at JSCGI, all managed by Adam from JMW London and Justine Catterall.

James was tasked to turn the mass of video files, images and audio tracks into a programmed live show using Catalyst. Part of this process was done at XL Video's office in Hemel Hempstead to save time on site, however due to the delivery schedule of the video content lots more had to be done in Paris meaning some long days and late nights. Being involved from an early stage in meetings at Jack Morton's office in London and a wealth of emails and conference calls meant that James could ensure content was delivered in a way to work smoothly in Catalyst and make best use of the projection media.

Basic Monkey supplied a Jands Vista S3 system to control the 4x XL Catalyst systems and also our own new 12 core Catalyst system for surround audio playback and video processing. The system involved signal routing which allowed country and studio names to be keyed onto the live webcast at the same time as flags were displayed on the main screen. Live camera feeds were fed into Catalyst to be output to the side screens when not used as part of the trend video intros.

The show involved heavy use of alpha channel transparency to allow builds rather than fades, this involved some creative programming which was made readily achievable thanks to the the Jands Vista software.

Next years show is in New York and despite being pretty tired after the week, James is hoping to be involved again next year.

Many thanks to Nina Dunn from Knifedge who took the photos during the show (I was busy pressing the button in video city!).

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Today, James is in Hanover for CSP AV to rig and light an exhibition stand as part of the big commercial vehicle show at the Hanover Messe.

Due to the limited availability of rigging points, truss bridles were used to get the grid as wide as possible over the stand area. Since the rig will be in place for 4 weeks, budgets are tight and as such manual chain blocks had to be used and this makes for a tricky lift!

Basic Monkey provided lighting plots, weight calculations and James as crew for the install. Keven Heyes from Theatr Clwyd was also there and providing all truss and rigging.

It can be pretty hard work on tour sometimes. You can get shows that are a real push to get ready in time, with huge problems and lots of stress. Sometimes, however, you have shows that are just an absolute pleasure...

With no more than 3 hours of sleep after Werchter, everyone was a little tired to say the least at 9am, but the load in was made nice and easy by the very capable and friendly local crew. We were done by lunchtime and ready to clear the stage for the support band. This is when we discovered that the production company had built a temporary swimming pool at the back of the stage. Added to this, the local crew with a bit of spare scaffolding, had built a diving board!

The rest of the day was filled with naps, dips, snacks and a very mellow vibe.

The show went without a hitch and went down a storm with the 19,000 strong crowd who were already on a high from Holland winning 2-1 against Brazil. Maxi gave the crowd a further boost by appearing on stage wearing a Holland football top for the encore, welcomed by deafening cheers and applause.

Gig to remember!

James

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It's a privilege to be with a band who are playing main stage at each of the biggest festivals in Europe this summer. Glastonbury, Sziget and Rock Werchter.

80,000 people are expected this year each day, with 65,000 of those doing all three days. So it's pretty big in numbers, but having a small site means that when it's full, it feels and looks like it!

We were on after Muse, who are touring a very comprehensive lighting and video rig which isn't designed to be taken down in a hurry! We rigged our screen and lighting the night before and arranged an extended changeover period to allow Muse's crew to strip out their 'Blockbuster' style rig which was hung in front of ours.

The changeover was pretty manic but we all made it in once piece! 4am finish, straight to Amsterdam for a 9am load-in...

James

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