"James Valpy's nickname is 'The Hippotech', but he's not a hi-tech game ranger. This South African born, English trained, lighting and video technician trots the globe providing stunning visuals with Green Hippo Media Servers. I caught up with James backstage at the Johannesburg leg of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour.
"Born in Cape Town in 1988, James left South Africa for England when he was four. He studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and completed his BA (Hons) in Theatre Practice. James initially specialized in production lighting but soon gravitated to video as a medium. The knowledge of both proved invaluable.
"James was working as an associate to the production designer Tupac Martir, when he met Ed Prescott on the Beyoncé Glastonbury tour. James bumped into Ed again in Azerbaijan where he was working as house tech for J-Lo, Rihanna and Shakira. In spite of the twenty hour days, James managed to keep a smile on his face throughout, and this left a good impression on Ed. Ed liked what he saw and put James's name forward as the Green Hippo Tech for Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour. James got the job, and he and Ed now both work for Bowman Touring Video out of the USA. And they are both currently travelling the world with Rihanna.
"James first got his hands on a Hippo at university where, as part of his second year studies, he volunteered to program and engineer the video for a big musical theatre show. The university had an older V2 Hippo that was upgraded to a V3; and they used a MagicQ desk to program, which was similar to the Avolites desk, which James knew. James trained with Simon Harris and Hippo helped him out in loaning a machine for a university show. He quickly became the Hippo expert at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He was the crucial link between lighting and video, and in his final year of study he worked in the Green Hippo Office with Nick Charalampidis. He tested new versions of software, and got invaluable under-the-hood experience of the software. It was the perfect training for problem-diagnosis in Hippo Systems.
"It all came together for 'The 'Hippotech' on the Diamonds World Tour, where his skills and experience were thoroughly tested. For Rihanna's B-Show there is no automation rigged, so James had to take all the original video content, which was pre-masked to the raster, and stitch it back together in After Effects. This meant he could use one Hippo to playback the content, instead of five Large Hippo HD units, which is how it worked on the USA leg of the tour. He had one week to build a 3 X Hippo HD system for the main show, and a 2 X Hippo Portamus system for the B-Show. The Diamonds tour was also the first show to use the new Blackmagic Design USB3 SD SDI capture cards. For the Johannesburg leg James used one Hippo Portamus to run the content on the screens on stage; and a backup unit to provide FX for the IMAG screens. At one point during the show all of the video was run through only two Hippo Portamus laptops.
"Using two versions of Hippo software ver 3.2 to Time-code sync on a layer, it provided immense power when using DMX control. To date the system has been rock solid, as one would expect from Hippo.
"The youthful James takes great inspiration from video practitioner legends such as Cherie Sturm, Ed Prescott, Graham Lambkin, Ed Lawlor and John Bowman; as he does from Green Hippo gurus Simon Harris, Kris Murray and Loren Barton.
"The future is bright, not only for James but for media servers, which will become ever more crucial to the live event industry as projectors and LEDs get brighter. The challenge for the designer is to push their creativity, and stretch their technical capability, in designing more visually spectacular shows. When audiences pay top dollar to see a big live show, they expect a mi
