Chaos Crew Provide the Whole Package for Maroon 5"Chaos Visual Productions has supplied me with the perfect combination of great equipment and a fabulous crew -- I simply can't fault them -- everything has been efficient and stress free since we started rehearsals -- they really know how to look after a jet-lagged lighting designer! Any problems simply get solved: for example, our main screen won't fit in a couple of the venues on this tour but scaling everything down to fit is no problem." Straight talking Texan, Eric Wade, is currently at the helm of Californian band, Maroon 5 as designer of lights, video, stage, set, FX -- in fact pretty much everything except sound. "Although this is not a long tour, we are going large, very large on this," continues Wade. "This outing is really fulfilling commitments from last year that were disrupted by Adam Levine's involvement with The Voice in the USA and, from both a performance and a production point of view, we want to make sure the audience get absolutely 100% from us." Certainly, Chaos is more than doing their part to achieve that. Described by the London Evening Standard reviewer as "the largest, most high-definition screens I've seen at the O2," the video element of the show weaves itself seamlessly throughout the set. The central screen spans the stage over an inverted arch truss that frames the performance area of the band. At 48' x 24' it is flanked by two smaller screens stage left and right creating an exceptionally wide stage; restricted viewing is definitely not a problem at this show. All three carry a combination of video content and live footage which is also shown on two more IMAG screens flown above the audience half way down the hall. The company says at every turn, Wade seems to intuitively have the audience's visual experience as his guiding mantra. "Video has been an integral part of any lighting designer's box of tricks since the early 90's," reflects Wade, "but in the last decade the progress in what is visually achievable has really accelerated. For this tour we've combined some of the video from the last tour with lots of new stuff -- The Control Freak Systems servers are a very clever piece of kit -- I particularly like the effects produced with the audio reactor -- like the band themselves they are both fun and very cool to watch." "I work very closely with my video director, Chris Keating and although the show is programmed throughout we're also able to respond to what happens from night to night in a very fluid manner. That takes a more than a little trust and cooperation and to achieve that so quickly into a tour says a great deal about the calibre of the people from Chaos UK that I have around me. With two cameras front-of-house, two floor cameras on stage, six statics and two robotics in the truss, I'm able to create the perfect combination of live visuals and video content for the audience -- and that's what we're all here to do." 
|
