Musical summer hots up for CT

Summer 2009 sees Creative Technology as busy as ever with a raft of festivals and tours on its itinerary including London’s Hyde Park events, Glastonbury Festival, the iTunes Festival and tours from Rod Stewart and Elton John.

In Hyde Park, Hard Rock Calling saw The Killers, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen headline, whilst Blur reformed to play two sold out dates and the Wireless Festival completed another successful year with Basement Jaxx and Kanye West topping the bill. All three events made good use of two R7 stage wing IMAG screens, each measuring 7.11m wide by 4.57m high (7 x 6 panels), with processing via a Lighthouse LIP XGA unit. Images were provided from a live camera feed supplied by XL Video.

“The screens were loaded in on the 24th June and stayed there until Sunday 5th July to be used for all three events,” explains CT project manager Stuart Young. “We used our R7 for this particular job because we needed to have a screen that has excellent image quality, and R7 fits the bill.”

At Glastonbury Festival, meanwhile, two 23.2m2 (6 x 5 panels) R7 screens, mounted back-to-back on a goalpost structure, formed the Village Screen. This was funded by the Arts Council, Glastonbury and London 2012 and was used to provide non-commercial content for the enjoyment of the festival goers. As well as the LED panels, CT also provided content control for the screens.

“Throughout the festival, the screens showed a multimedia program that was devised by the Arts Council,” says CT project manager Steve Purkess. “It supplied an interactive element – people could wave at the screen and see their image on there – as well as live action from The Queens Head, a Sky broadcast of the second rugby test match against South Africa and short films collected by the Arts Council from around the UK.”

Rod Stewart’s tour, ending in Luxembourg in July, featured a 10.16m wide by 6.1m high (8 x 10 panels) R7 screen. Cameras are supplied by CT sister company CT Touring with screen content a combination of bespoke background footage, historical archive footage and live camera feeds.

Once the European leg has finished, the tour moves to the US, where Creative Technology Los Angeles takes over screen duties, using its own stock of R7.

“CT has been working with Rod since the mid 90s and understands what is required, part of which is consistency,” says Young. “This is why our bases in both Europe and the US stock R7, which we use for its picture quality, light weight and compact truck pack, using CT’s custom made packing system. CT Touring also provides cameras on a global basis.”

CT’s R7 has also just finished touring with Elton John, another artist the company has been working with since the mid 90s, where two 5.08m high by 5.33m wide screens were deployed. R7 can also be seen on the 2 many DJs tour, which runs throughout the summer, LoveBox in London’s Victoria Park, T4 on the Beach, V2009, Red Bull X-Fighters at Battersea Power Station and Reading Festival.

“We are very happy with our Lighthouse R7 screen both here and in the US,” says CT managing director Dave Crump. “It’s extremely important to us that we are able to provide our clients with consistent quality in the products we use throughout every part of a project and R7 helps
us to do just that.”