The tour included several arena shows and was the largest to date for the rising stars who originally met via You Tube around 2012, as well as the first for Global Live, the new 'live' division of Ashley Tabor's UK-based Global Entertainment - and a co-promotion with AEG Live
The Vamps stage / set and video design was evolved by the tour's technical director Iain Whitehead (Production North) and lighting designer Peter Barnes, and included 145sq.m of XL Video's ROE Visual MC-7T LED screen. The lively IMAG mix was cut by Dan Ormerod, and video was a major part of the overall aesthetic that made the show and its presentation exciting, interesting and enjoyable to watch.
Video screens were the most influential visual element when Iain and Peter started discussing a look for the show with the band's management, who wanted a main screen and two outer ones angled backwards towards upstage centre. The band had existing footage that needed integrating into the show, so it was important that the combined screen size was close to 16:9 format, explained Peter.
The 7 mm ROE Visual product was chosen by Iain and XL's project manager Phil Mercer as a good quality and cost-efficient solution. The three onstage screen surfaces and the two IMAG side screens were all made up of the MC-7T, giving complete continuity in terms of quality and appearance of the footage.
The three onstage screens were each eight tiles wide by 10 deep (measuring 4.8 x 6m), supported by the sides in a landscape format of nine tiles wide by seven high (giving 5.4 x 4.2m).
All the playback content was produced by The Vamps' videographer Dean Sherwood.
Looking after XL's Catalyst v5 media server control system, used to store and play all the pre-recorded footage, was Robin Haddow, and this material was primarily timecode triggered
The four IMAG camera channels (essentially one for each Vamp band member) were also fed into the Catalyst for outputting to screen. Having the Catalyst downstream and using the v5's Exact Mapping feature enabled pixel-perfect images to be routed and fitted to each screen.
(Jim Evans)
