LVS-800 Vision Mixer @ London’s Tower Festival

Edirol’s new LVS-800 vision mixer has made a spectacular working debut just days after its European launch.  Against the historic backdrop of the Tower of London, the LVS-800 was teamed with Edirol V-8 mixers by VJs Adam Seaman and Jim Horsfield, to provide visual imagery for the unique musical partnership that is The Bays and The Heritage Orchestra.



Playing one of the Womad headline slots of the 2009 Tower Festival, which is staged in the grassy moat of the Tower of London, The Bays and The Heritage Orchestra present a special challenge to their technical crew, relying on the IT infrastructure and live camera work to bring the whole show together.

Musicians from the Heritage Orchestra walk onstage to find a blank music sheet on the monitors in front of them. Only when the performance begins do 'live composers' John Metcalfe and Simon Hale start to write music.  With the four members of the Bays - drummer Andy Gangadeen, bassist Chris Taylor and keyboard and effects men Ski Oakenfull and Simon Richmond - joining in, this is improvisation on a grand scale, made possible by use of the software platform Sibelius for the musical notation.

Video designer and visual project manager Adam Seaman and Jim Horsfield are tasked with creating a visual representation of the process.  Seaman explains: "I want to show the creative development of the music-writing process to the audience."  Having worked with The Bays since 2007, Seaman has had to solve technical puzzles of latency of signal transfer and timing, as well as meeting the artistic demands of their performances.

On stage, 12 ‘bullet’ cameras cover the different sections of the orchestra and the band, giving a uniquely intimate view of the musicians' interaction with the composers, conductor and the Bays.  Seaman and Horsfield use 2x Edirol V-8 and 1x Edirol LVS-800 8-channel vision mixers to balance their own bespoke video content with the composers’ computer outputs and feeds from the bullet cameras, directing the mix onto two large side screens.


Seaman and Horsfield are the first VJs in the UK to take the LVS-800 out into the field.  “It’s a cracking little mixer, and I can see it being very popular for live events which need a compact unit with a self-contained scaler,” says Adam Seaman.    “It’s a proper camera-switching mixer so the key benefit for us was the facility to mix straight across.  We could do very fast cutting on different sources as well as effects editing.”

As well as two computer inputs for seamless mixing between multiple sources, the LVS-800 has a Down Stream Keyer, enabling graphics and title overlays, and built-in digital chroma key, luminance key, PinP and transitions for professional compositing and effects.  LVS-800 also has Separate Program Out and A/B mix outputs for multi-screen applications.

Seaman continues.  “Normally this is a 3-screen show – unfortunately precluded at the Tower Festival by the saddle-span stage, which couldn’t be reconfigured just for one act – and we have defined its current format with a daisy chain of Edirol V-4 and V-8 units, two of each, which allow us to flip content between side and centre screens.  Typically we have about 14 channels of video, including the on-stage cameras, oscilloscope input, laptop and VJ content. It is a fantastic experience being involved in such an original concept, where we are able to incorporate our ideas and vision within such a free-flowing, improvisation-rich environment."

For more information, visit www.rolandsg.co.uk and www.ediroleurope.com

 

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