The Pet Shop Boys Dreamworld Greatest Hits Tour 2022
Live Events
Music
Hardware
Partners
London-based Really Creative Media (RCM) reunited with the Pet Shop Boys for the UK and European leg of the band’s Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live 2022 tour where Disguise solo media servers played a key role. In this case study you will learn how the Disguise solo controlled content perspective on the show’s kinetically moving video surfaces, including a mid-stage blow-through LED screen in automated flying mode and an array of custom-built, robotic pivoting LED panels.
3
months on tour
20
countries
33
shows
27
touring crew
The challenge
The primary challenge for RCM on the tour was the ability to make changes on the road. RCM needed to re-program certain creative elements, such as camera IMAG, while traveling and to process technical screen updates to ready the show for upcoming festival screens with different proportions.
Having used Disguise in a similar way on other projects, RCM’s Disguise Programmer and Operator, Iain Harvey, knew that the solo media server could meet the demands of a fast-moving tour as it crossed Europe and the UK.
The solution
Harvey deployed four solo media servers with HD-SDI capture and 10GbE cards, which he calls “small and compact but powerful.”
The solo’s Stage Visualiser allowed Harvey to work on a 3D model of the show and maximise precious time in pre-vis ahead of rehearsals. Perspective mapping of content onto the Array – a set of 16 vertically rotating LED video screen robotic arms on stage – made use of the solo’s built-in perspective mapping to match the content with the upstage LED screens. That feature continued to enable Harvey to tweak maps daily to line up content based on the stage screen configurations of a particular venue.
In addition, Disguise’s Designer software gave Harvey the flexibility of programming and fully visualising the show in traveling scenarios, such as on the tour bus, without having the physical stage setup in place. The ability to view content on a 3D model and update the show file as if he were onsite speeded festival changeovers and facilitated updates offline while the equipment was in transit between venues.
Results
The show delivered an aesthetically pleasing look with great effects as the combined perspective of all the screens integrated with the lighting, to support an evening of music that fans won’t soon forget.
The Disguise solo unit is a really deployable server, especially for touring environments, that gives me access to the full Disguise toolkit of features in the software. They are small and compact, saving rack space and contributing to the weight reduction of our touring systems, which helps us achieve sustainable touring targets.
Disguise Programmer and Operator, RCM