Leach was asked onboard after his innovative work with REM last year. He and Corbijn got their heads together and came up with the idea of six upstage moving screens, just off-centre and all hung at slightly jaunty angles, three in portrait format and three in landscape. "The weirder it becomes the more sense the whole video design makes, and the closer the whole medium becomes to the music," says Leach.
XL Video has serviced Depeche Mode's live video needs since 2001. Touring The Angel is being project managed for XL by Des Fallon, who says: "This is one of the best looking shows I have ever seen. Being brought onboard early by tour director Lee Charteris gave me a real insight into what Anton, Blue and Lee wanted to achieve aesthetically. That has made all the difference in putting together a tour of this nature with a band and artistic director as creatively influential as Depeche Mode and Anton Corbijn." Leach describes the overall video vibe as "Everything that IMAG isn't".
There are four operated cameras from XL's stock of Sony D50s - two in the pit and two at FOH. Instead of using a host of DVEs and other devices for dynamics, Leach has gone analogue. Each of his camera operators has acquired a 'box of tricks' as the tour has progressed, containing anything from filters, gauzes and sheets of slashed plastic to bead strings, that make a series of effects when placed in front of the cameras. They also have a selection of Cokin 'in-camera' effects that drop into a slot on the front of the lens. With video running for the entire show, the operators are kept busy dealing with the effects as well as getting their shots.
For an idiosyncratic edge, each D-50 has a Toshiba CU50 "parasite" surveillance camera clamped onto its viewfinder. This gives the grainy CCTV ambience a new functional 'reporting' feel, and a yet another diverse set of feeds at Leach's fingertips on the GV Kayak mixer/switcher on which he cuts the show - utilising almost every facility and feature.
The two pit cameras each also have an IR 'lipstick' camera attached, one poking into its viewfinder and the other looking across the lens. A third IR camera is mounted on Martin Gore's mic stand, shooting through a black feather to produce a quirky, textured light effect.The six screens are all made up from Barco I-Lite 12 LED panels, flown from the production mother grid, with automation controlled by Eugene Benavidez from the lighting crew. Content switching to the six screens is achieved by Dataton via three Magic DVE's.
Video playback material is stored on two Doremi hard drives. The complex engineering, programming and editing job of honing the original sources into usable footage is being co-ordinated by XL's Alastair MacDiarmid. A certain amount was supplied by Corbijn, with the rest left up to Leach to create and supervise. This is culled form a variety of sources, including clips from Depeche Mode's extensive video archives, which have been reinvented in new, inspired and specific ways, and integrated into the show. They are also producing new footage and trying different effects and ideas 'on the fly' as they go, boosting the organic nature of the creative show building process, and ensuring it stays 'live' in every sense of the word.
As part of the set, Corbijn designed an aluminium sphere that hangs on stage right, containing three 'letterbox' strips of Barco O-Lite. Leach sends scrolling text and key-words to this for most of the set, plus a few selected images.
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