Westlife: The Twenty Tour

WESTLIFE: THE TWENTY TOUR

The Irish quartet return to the stage after a seven-year hiatus, with a sell-out UK and Ireland tour celebrating two decades of hits. TPi was on site at Manchester Arena to get the inside story from the tour’s tireless video team, The LED Shed.

Twenty years after they first burst onto the music scene, the UK and Ireland legs of Westlife’s The Twenty Tour began at Belfast’s SSE Arena in May. Spanning 32 shows, the grand finale was played out to more than 170,000 fans across two nights in July at Dublin’s Croke Park.

Central to show design was a 20m x 7.5m LED screen provided by video supplier, The LED Shed. According to the supplier, this centre LED was a bit of a challenge – “Mainly due to individual venues and their quirks,” began Director Tom Levitt. “Sometimes the roof might not take that weight, or at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena, for example, the roof is just too low. We couldn’t do the split there; it had to be a full solid screen,” he added. “We also had to rethink our usual tour workflow based around how the show itself was designed and set up.”

Four channels of Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K were placed FOH, instead of the usual one or two. This meant there was one for each band member, capturing a head-and-shoulders mid-shot for the picture-inpicture (PIPs) on screen. Each of the 21 tracks had its own individual styling, and so the PIPs were integrated with custom graphics and

animations, designed by America’s Got Talent’s Sila Sveta. “We used a wide range of real-time rendered Notch effects on the incoming camera images themselves, such as pencil-drawn outlines of the band or cartoons, all in an effort to make them look less jarring with Sila Sveta’s content,” explained Levitt. “Then we had a fifth camera in the pit on a tracking dolly, providing a simple relay feed for the two IMAGs either side of the stage.”

Levitt outlined the three main components making up the show’s look. “There’s the pre-rendered animation graphics from Sila Sveta, and there’s the quirky Notch effects. Those two elements, combined with all of the live camera imagery, work together to create the final look.”

Cameras relied on B4 optics and Blackmagic’s fibre backs, which were converted back to SDI in the PPU and routed via a patch panel to the switcher. Skaarhoj control panels were used to colour match the incoming camera feeds, while an ATEM 4 M/E switcher and 2 M/E broadcast panel were used to cut the programme feed.

“Because of the four cameras FOH, we used ATEM’s super source function to composite the images, which we then took as an auxiliary output to get a quad view of the cameras,” said Video Director Billy Robinson. “That AUX, alongside the programme feed of M/E 1 and M/E 2, was then fed into disguise gx 2 media servers to combine all of the live camera visuals that I cut, with the other show content Tom described.” The Twenty Tour wasn’t the first time Robinson had worked with Westlife. In fact, he worked with the band for more than 10 years before it split.

“I know the lads really well,” he said. “Each of them has their own quirks, and I can easily predict how they’ll react or behave. This undoubtedly results in a slicker cut as most of the time, I can anticipate which camera we

need to go to next.” Robinson continued: “Looking back on the tour, I would say Liverpool was my favourite show as it’s my hometown, but the scale of Croke Park was just incredible. And with it being the final one, after more than two months on the road, it meant we could finally go home!”

Levitt added: “It has been great working with Westlife. Though the tour hasn’t been without its challenges, particularly with the venue and staging characteristics mentioned earlier, being able to trust that your equipment isn’t one of those headaches is invaluable.” TPi www.westlife.com www.ledshed.co.uk