Some things can be certain when you're off to a U2 show. Number one is that you will be experiencing astonishing music and performance. Closely following this is the shape and form of the show itself. This shape shares the fiber of the music and combines to make that most sought after, magical whole. Like the music, the design is spare yet huge, iconic and simple, yet satisfyingly multilayered.
The latest foray by U2, The Vertigo Tour, sees the band exploring and extending raw rock-and-roll roots. The album it supports, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is an exploration of birth and death, God, war, peace, and, as with them all, love. It is musically a reversion to what has always been U2's greatest strength: rocking hard — epically, simply, reverbratingly hard.
The design of the show plays to the strengths of simplicity, but this is simplicity executed on a very complex scale. There are things you would expect to see on a big concert: Martin MAC 2000 wash units in large numbers, VARI*LITE VL3000™ profiles upstage, Martin Atomic 3000 strobes. Then, there were the surprises: the single Arri 18kW, copiously gelled in dark blue; the four vertical sticks that fly in with a simple array of no color ETC Source Fours®; the shockingly cool Barco MiSPHERE video arrays. But all of this is deployed with a disciplined approach driven by strong choices. Each song has its signature look, and no look is repeated.
The tour is still in its early days, and it proved to be an excellent time to see an amazing piece in the first throes of finding its core. The day after the show, we sat down with U2's show designer, Willie Williams. Williams has long plied his craft with U2, and in our discussion, we got a rare look behind the surface of designing a rock show, glimpsing a collaboration of personalities and technologies.
LD: So where does it begin?
Willie Williams: I've worked with U2 for a very long time, so it is an ongoing collaboration. Given their status in the industry, it's not like any other kind of design job, because it's so personal and because we know each other so well.
It's a much more comfortable collaboration than working with a new artist where you have to learn about them and find out where they are coming from. We know each other inside out, so there's an opportunity to stretch myself. But at the same time, they have the resources and the balls to do something groundbreaking. In fact, that's a given now. We don't even talk about it. If they're going to go out, it has to be extraordinary.
LD: So, the early meetings?
WW: Generally, the way it happens is I go in by myself first, probably about a year ahead of time, and we just catch up, because I tend not to see the band very much between tours. It is helpful when we get back together again, because it's very easy to see where the changes are and what's going on. Plus, they're in the studio, so the most informative thing is what the music sounds like. The album is only ever half finished when I first hear it. But this time, it was very clear that they were absolutely on a roll.
I started the process by making a book of sketches of everything that you could possibly do with a generic stage in an arena: at one end, in the center, with B-stage, without B-stage, loops, ramps, in sections, and so on. I wanted to show them that these aren't necessarily aesthetic choices. They are often simply practical decisions based on the parameters of the show, seat kills, etc.
It helped us cut to the chase and focus on what the stance should be — what the show was about — rather than getting sidetracked by the position of the drum riser.
That first meeting cleared up a lot of things for me. When presented with an album title like How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, there's a temptation to take it literally, and I had several “bomb” ideas which I liked. It became clear, however, that the title is metaphorical; the atomic bomb is your relationship, or Bono's father dying, or any of the huge things which we have to deal with in life. As always with U2, the songs are really about relationships.
I took this on board and for a while thought we could do something really minimal but a lot more aggressive than the Elevation tour had been. The Edge was really keen to not even have a B-stage. He said, “Let's contain the energy. Let's just have a stage, no ramps, no anything. Let's just go out there and play.” That's easy for the guitar player to say.
In a way, this tour is the culmination of where they have been coming from for a while, including the last album. Given that we are playing in the same buildings as on the Elevation tour, clearly this was not going to be a radical departure in terms of the touring format
LD: It seems as though, physically, this tour was an evolution of Elevation, if you will.
WW: Yes, exactly. But the key thing was that what comes out of this box is very different from what came out of Elevation in terms of mood, because the world is different. The show needed to be a lot less cuddly and a lot more aggressive.
LD: The show has a certain exploded look in terms of pixels, though. How did the LEDs come into the picture?
WW: At the start of the process, I had assumed that I wouldn't go anywhere near LEDs now that it has become so ubiquitous in rock shows. However, I am in touch with a lot of LED manufacturers and could see that there was still potential to develop some new and interesting ideas. We started talking and a lot of fun ideas emerged. What became the Barco MiSPHERE panels are obviously the showiest element, but there's also the LEDs built into the stage and the SACO Factory Lights.
LD: Were those MiPIX around the edge?
WW: No, they are custom LED lighting fixtures built for us by SACO in Montreal. I don't think they even have a name yet.
The MiSPHEREs came out of a discussion between Mark Fisher and I. [Fisher, a renowned show designer in his own right, is a frequent collaborator with Williams.] We had been talking about various ways to fill the area above the stage — that's the key to making a rock show work. When you're selling 360°, you can't have large physical objects as they'll block sightlines. Originally, we started talking about these tiny little LED pixels which would hang on infinitely thin filaments. Oddly, we both had the same idea independent of each other; Mark started talking along these lines, and I already had a little picture of something similar.
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Originally, we wanted to make it something different. We wanted to make a three-dimensional matrix of LED pixels, so you could actually produce three-dimensional objects inside this thing. We called it a video cloud, and we did the renderings of it. Eventually, Frederic Opsomer, who's our LED consultant, mocked up — using MiPIX — this forest of cables with a three-dimensional grid of MiPIX inside it. We all went over to Belgium to see it, and it was about half scale; a 20" × 20" cube of MiPIX spaced at about 9" intervals.
It was an awesome thing to look at, but even though everyone was jumping up and down and saying how extraordinary it was, something about it troubled me. The real issue was that you could see it was three dimensional, but it only really looked three dimensional in the same way that 3D graphics on a two-dimensional screen look three dimensional.
I realized that, we were about to drop four million dollars on making a very clever device to produce what your brain would not read as anything more than a very large two-dimensional screen. If you could walk around this object, it was absolutely amazing, so maybe for a shopping mall, or an atrium, it would be worth the investment. But for a show where an audience member is looking at it from one point of view, it didn't really give us a great deal more than a low-res video wall. So, I had Frederic rebuild it as one continuous curtain, and then we ended up with these panels that we can space around the stage and, weirdly, by going two dimensional with panels, the overall dimensionality of the thing is much more impressive.
LD: It does read as 3D. When you looked through the array, panel upon panel, overlapping, and intersecting, it had huge dimension.
WW: And it's very deconstructed. All of the graphics are fairly gestural. So, that's where we ended up. The two great things are that you have completely clean sight lines, and then, out of nowhere, you can drop in this gigantic look, do something, and then get rid of it. Also, it reads from both sides. So, the people behind the stage can see through it. It's not in their way, and they can also see the image. For most video screens, the experience of watching television on the back is not very satisfying.
LD: Was Barco a bit horrified to discover that you wanted to reel them up and down? Was there worry about the physical duress?
WW: They're used to us, really. And Frederic Opsomer, our interface with both Barco and SACO, has so much enthusiasm for the project that it's pretty infectious. They all want the chance to do it; they all want to see what can happen next. As with a lot of manufacturers, they rely on designers to tell them what to make. They're not out in the field, so they don't necessarily understand what the task requires.
LD: Did you find that having Opsomer as an intermediary layer between you and the manufacturers was a positive thing?
WW: It's vital, really, because he's really creative and understands what the creative task is. He goes to a lot of shows, and he's very involved in the world that we work in. He's able to translate, but he also speaks “scientist” — he can translate to the manufacturers what's going on. He also speeds the process. I can go to him with an idea, and he can tell me if it is possible yet and if it's affordable yet.
LD: How have the MiSPHEREs traveled?
WW: One of the problems with the MiSPHEREs is that the cables at the very top of the string take all the weight. There are tiny steel cables between the spheres, as well as the data cables, for two reasons. One is safety. Also, all of the weight is otherwise on the data cable. Initially, we had a lot of trouble with the steel cables at the top snapping, because they're so fine. But, again, they're now on the third generation of cables.
Frederic understands that, for the manufacturers to produce 12,000 new cables in the space of a week, is a monumental task. But for us, a week is an eternity — we will do three more shows before we get the replacements, so he really understands that part of the process.
Although, compared to something like the PopMart screen, this technology is incredibly reliable and has essentially worked straight out of the box.
LD: Well, that answers the questions about why they don't swing from them. We kept expecting the band members to swing from the MiSPHEREs.
WW: They've been told! “It will land on your head. Go ahead, you'll only do it once!” They're a bit of a triumph, the MiSPHEREs. From a very pragmatic point of view, the production manager loves it, too. You've got acres of video surface that just roll up and go away. You roll it off the truck, hang it, plug it in, and away you go. This concept will definitely go somewhere, even if this product only makes it through this tour.
LD: What about what we call “Willie Lights” — those custom oddities that always seem to be at the center of your shows, whether it's the minis on cranes or a giant lemon? In this case, it's the industrial lamp-looking things. From whence do they spring?
WW: Well, I could probably give you about a hundred different flippant answers to that! But I'll spare you. It really comes from knowing what you want to see and finding out what you need to make that happen, rather than starting with gear. I realized a long, long time ago, that if you start with gear and then build a show, you can go a long way, but you start to look like everything else immediately. You absolutely begin to set limits right there. I wanted something that would feel different from the moment you came in. They are hanging there from the moment the doors open. And they don't come back until the end. But then, they do two very surprising things.
LD: We were really surprised when they started spinning.
WW: You've always got to get at least two gags out of any one element that you build.
LD: Do those things end up being the focal point of your designs? Are they the first thing to manifest, and then everything else sort of happens from there?
WW: It's more of a touchstone than a cornerstone, really. Obviously, in one sense, the factory lights play a very small part in the show, but it helps you stay focused on the stance. Otherwise, you just end up with revolving gobos and then having to kill yourself!
It's funny, I was talking to Bruce Ramus, my lighting director, and I think yesterday was the first show where we started to feel that the show itself is finding its feet, in terms of where it wants to go. With U2 shows, we only ever see the tip of the iceberg. There are so many ideas that will never come to fruition — really mad shit. But some of them do, and gradually, you get a feeling for where the thing wants to go.
Left to my own devices, I would push the show into a much darker place, mood-wise. It gets there, but I would have really pushed it much further. It would have been self-defeating in terms of the band and their audience, but some of the things came through.
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And what's just beginning to surface now is the surveillance camera concept, which was one of the very early ideas. Fisher first brought up the idea of shooting the audience when they were unaware they were being filmed. For U2, it's always about the relationship between the band and the audience. And over the years, we've shot lights into the audience, built ramps into the audience, projected on the audience. We had the video confessional on ZooTV. It's always about getting the audience involved, but the huge no-no for me has always been shooting the audience, because as soon as you get them on screen it's always, “Hello, Mum!” Every video director who has worked with us has always been told, “Rule number one is don't shoot the audience.” En massse it's fantastic, but as soon as you can see the whites of their eyes, it's horrible!
So Fisher and I were in Vegas on We Will Rock You [LD, Oct. 2004] talking about this. And in the way that he does, Mark will listen to what I say, and then digest it, and then tell me what it is that I'm actually saying. It's like having a therapist, which is fantastically helpful.
LD: What a great collaboration to have.
WW: Yes, it's invaluable, because he listens to my raving and then says, “What you seem to be saying is this.” But he suggested that we have surveillance cameras and shoot the audience when they're not aware of it. I was very excited about that; I felt it was so apropos of where we are now, and, of course, if you live in London, you're on camera at all times! So, I could have done a whole show based around that.
I also met three designers in London called UVA, United Visual Artists [see sidebar]. They're an unusual operation, actually, because they have a code writer, a graphic designer, and a VJ, so they come from a very new place. Their background is very much rave culture, VJ culture, where you have to just create visuals for hours.
The thing that really won me over is a program they've written where they can take a live video image and break it up into pixels, but then the pixels can be anything, including other video feeds. And, so, the combination of those two ideas, is that you end up with a live picture of Bono, which pixellates and becomes the audience.
LD: And are the audience pictures taken from that night's show, or is it something you've got archived?
WW: If you know me at all, you know it has to be real. There's no point in doing it if it's not real.
It became apparent that this was not going to be a show about making a comment about surveillance or anything as dark as that, but I just rode it out. I knew that Bono understood what I was doing. The surveillance didn't appear at all for the first five shows, then I gradually found a place for it, and introduced it. Just over the past few days, I've realized that the more interesting thing to do is shoot the band with the surveillance cameras. The cameras are placed in the best locations for shooting the audience, so the angles for shooting the band are pretty eccentric. The shots are really interesting, because they are not what you would choose at all. Did I do it last night?
LD: You did it last night.
WW: I didn't put the band in it though.
LD: That's right, they were audience shots.
WW: There was a reason for that. I can't remember what it was. But normally during the song “One,” I'll run the sequence twice: the first time around using images from the audience, and the second time around, it's these images of the band.
I can see that this is where we are going. Yesterday, I showed Bono the surveillance footage of the band, and he was quickly excited. He's going, “It's so punk, it's so punk!” which, for the mood of rock music at the moment, is great. All the young bands are playing guitars, and that whole sensibility is alive.
LD: The whole surveillance thing also plays into your idea of “unmediated IMAG” doesn't it? [Williams first introduced the idea of having constant, simultaneous, unmixed, single camera IMAG of the band members in a header over the stage on the Elevation tour. He dubbed it unmediated IMAG]
WW: Yes, and I am running the cameras myself. From a technical point of view, here's an interesting thing: the cameras are [High End Systems] DL1s.
LD: You're using DL1s for the cameras? It makes so much sense. They're disguised as moving lights.
WW: When the DL1s appeared, I felt they were interesting. This is the third tour I've had them on. I just feel there's something there. They're not quite bright enough as a projector, but I sense that the concept is good. I found out that there is a retrofit you can do to put an infrared camera and an infrared light in them. It's a completely lunatic idea, but it's pretty intriguing, so I have been playing with them.
The best part is that I have direct control of them myself. I actually control them with a Sony PlayStation® handset. So, they're quite difficult to control, and the cameras are all in the wrong place, but it produces something really interesting, and it's so fresh when you look at it.
I have been telling everybody that I am making my own rival DVD for release on eBay later in the year. They know I am joking, but hopefully something will come of the surveillance project. It would be brave to make a commercial release of something so lo-fi, but it has something of the spirit of the time. It's very refreshing to see something so raw in a world of such over-produced visuals.
The other theme, I think, of this show is that, from the beginning, I wanted to finally make the leap where we don't separate lighting and video anymore, because, obviously, that's where the industry is going. What prevented it going all the way was essentially vendor politics. I wanted one crew. I wanted a “vision” crew that would deal with lighting and video, even though some things are obviously 100% video, like the Barco projectors, and some things are 100% lighting, like the DWEs. Between them, there is a real spectrum. The pixel curtains are video, but they look more like environmental lighting. The LEDs built into the stage are lighting fixtures, but they are fed with a video signal.
LD: We can see where the vendor thing comes in. Then, you either have to talk PRG into becoming a video company or XL into becoming a lighting company.
WW: The more difficult discussion was about sharing a crew. Then, you have to figure out who employs them and things like insurance, all that kind of dull stuff. Even so, it's just nuts to have lampies plugging in a MAC 2000 right next to video guys plugging in a DL1. It's madness, but we'll get it next time.
Continue on Page 4LD: The two are so clearly converging at so many levels — the control, the fixtures.
WW: If you look at the front of house control setup, there are three of us out that run the whole show. There's Bruce Ramus who's the lighting director. He has a [Flying Pig Systems] Wholehog® 3, and he calls the spots. Then there's “Smasher,” Stefaan Desmedt, who's become my video director. He's finally come out of denial and will let me call him a video director. He's come at it by such a circuitous route that he's not like any other touring video director. He basically flies the whole plane in terms of keeping the video system together but doesn't have any of the preconceived notions about television that many directors have, so he can look at the whole visual situation completely objectively.
In between them is me. And I have a Hog Wing, so I can do some of the lighting mix, and I have a little MIDI keyboard that triggers all the video, the PlayStation to do all the surveillance cameras, and a mouse and keyboard for editing the video pieces.
LD: We love that! Surrounded by typical technology on either side, there you are with a PlayStation handset running things.
WW: And it really works! It's really fluid. I mean it's not VJ'ing. It doesn't make sense for a band like this to push it that far, because they have a structure that they will settle into. But for us, it's at least much more fun.
LD: It's quite spectacular that the moving lights don't seem to move at all. That effects engine in the Hog is left untouched. Back on Joshua Tree, you were dead against moving lights to the extent that you hired, what was it, 24 spot light operators?
WW: That's right. We peaked at 31 operators, actually. I think to some extent now, an audience is used to moving light effects. All of the things we used to see, like the peels and the moving gobos — I think an audience member would probably get a feeling that that is old hat. It feels a little bit old fashioned, but video is absolutely on a roll. All you have to do is show some meaningless narrative footage behind a band. That's what a rock show is now.
I've said this ad nauseum, but for me, video is where moving lights were at the end of the ‘80s. It's easy now. You just get your [High End Systems] Catalyst™, or your MBox, a bunch of gear. It's affordable. Everybody's got a friend with a DV cam, and you push a button and off you go. At the time, PopMart was supposedly one of U2's sort of “down periods,” and now, every tour out there looks like PopMart. It's all low-res video, and it's easy. And for me, certainly in the context of U2, it's over. There's just no point in it. I'm sure if we did a big video show, we could do it better than anybody else, but we would be competing very much in the same arena. It's very easy to dazzle an audience with video, and I'm not 100% sure that's a battle you can win.
LD: But it can get so homogenized.
WW: I went to see a “high profile” artist a couple of years ago, and I took a friend of mine. He's a video editor I work with on Kronos Quartet, and he's not a big rock show person. We went and saw the show, and there was all this video madness, and at the end, he just sort of looked over — he's very dry — and said, “Nice plug-ins.”
It can be very hard to communicate to the artists that this is a cliché. Even if it looks great, it's hard to be excited about what you are seeing if you know which DVD the source image came from or what plug-ins have been used. The chances of anybody in the audience having any clue is minimal, but that's not the point. The point is that you know.
Another really important thing is to give dimension to the video experience. I've only realized in hindsight that a huge part of whatever we always try to do is to give some kind of sculptural or dimensional element to the surface itself.
LD: A scenic value…
WW: There's still a lot of value in video when used sparingly and intelligently, and it doesn't have to be big bucks. I work with a young Australian artist, Darren Hayes. He was the singer in Savage Garden. He had huge hits over here a couple of years ago, and now he has a solo career, and he's doing well. He's a very smart guy. I did a theatre-sized show with him at the end of last year, which is one of the most interesting things I've done in recent times. It used lighting and video in a completely unified way but was also very minimal. When the artist is on your side, you can really do great things without a lot of money.
LD: When you're designing a show, do you begin with a budget number, and then figure out what you can do? Or is it vice versa — you find the idea and then see how much that will cost?
WW: At one level, I never think about the budget ahead of time, because you'll just get freaked out and never be able to do anything. But at the same time, when you do this enough, you have a sense for what should be affordable. With a theatre show, like with Darren Hayes, I had a sense of what a production like that should be able to afford. Usually, you overestimate, but I always tend to be within reach.
In the initial design phases of this show, you know we will always have at least two or three different proposals that will get to quite a level of detail. Especially working with Fisher, we were fairly sure which ones were affordable and which ones weren't, and in the end, your instincts tend to tell you what feels about right.
LD: We'd love to see the non-affordable designs.
WW: Well, they weren't necessarily better. A lot of things came out of the bomb idea before we put that one to bed. We had a collapsing sphere of video LEDs above the stage — a complete sphere of video, which would deconstruct itself and do different things. It was a wonderful sculptural idea, but ultimately, it would have been completely wrong for this show and clearly not affordable.
LD: You chose to drop confetti about three songs into the set last night. It was really a spectacular moment. Does your crew hate you for that?
WW: No, because it was Bono's idea! He said, “I want tickertape,” so we just do it. That song opens the show sometimes. That was his idea, and I like it because it's a non-cyber physical element, which is so important in a show that relies so much on technology.
LD: It must be wonderful to work with a band that, in its desire to get some intimacy and proximity to the audience, is willing to cut seats to extend this lovely passarelle out onto the floor.
WW: It's interesting really; you're the first people to call the ramp a “passerelle,” but that's what it is. What's curious is that the floor capacity would be no larger if this wasn't here, because it's all based on exits really — in most venues. If this wasn't here, there would just be a big space at the back.
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Williams demonstartes the cueing and visualization system that UVA has developed. It is a custom interface showing the display systems and stage in a navigable 3D space. It has all of the controls for cueing, playback, and video laid out over the top of the visualization. The interface is displayed on two very large flat screen displays. Each cue, when double clicked, opens into a timeline, allowing him to change parameters and set keyframes for those changes. He gestures at the unfurling MiSPHERE arrays.
WW: If you were to regard them as regular video screens, the MiSPHERE panels would do most things fairly badly, so it was a question of finding the content that would be really great on the display. The graphic layout of the floor doesn't make any sense when you just look at the content, so we also needed a real-time 3D rendering — a WYSIWYG version, essentially — in order to be able to preview what we are making.
The interface is a bit dangerous, it's all so new, and barely been debugged. UVA is working with us constantly to improve it and add functions. This isn't video [Williams points to a bin-like area on the interface]; these are all generative modules. They generate video patterns.
LD: A particle system — sort of…
WW: Exactly.
LD: So here we are, in the FOH of a big video-driven design, and we don't see any kind of recognizable media server.
WW: We have Doremi decks for storing the media, then everything else runs via the UVA system. We looked at all the major media servers but in the end went for something more flexible.
LD: So then, this system that's running the MiSPHEREs has all of its content inclusive?
WW: It's a timeline device which triggers generative modules and video sequences. The application is very clever and extremely user friendly, once you make the required mental shift away from the media server assumptions.
Ash Nehru wrote the system. Every day, he's in here fixing the code. Except he's not here. He has remote control of the desktop, and you'll see him poking about sometimes — cursor moving, code appearing on screen — but he's in San Francisco or possibly London. Actually, I have no idea where he is, other than the fact that he's not on the tour. Having that VJ spirit in the building is good for the show. We might be able to do a similar thing with a media server, but it wouldn't have the same free-form feeling.
On one level, this is madness — to reach this level of flexibility, we have built a control setup where there's a slight but genuine potential for the entire system to collapse. But with U2, at least we know that, as long as we still have the PA and the house lights, we still have a show.
The Vertigo tour continues through this summer and beyond.
Willie Williams tapped United Visual Artists (UVA) to help him code a control environment, as well to provide content for the various imaging systems on Vertigo.
United Visual Artists is a production design team that came together in 2002 to produce graphical installations for touring bands and live events. Creative director Matt Clark, technical director Chris Bird, and software consultant Ash Nehru each gained previous experience working with bands like Nine Inch Nails, Pet Shop Boys, and Feeder. They also have combined their talents for commercial clients like Adidas, Diesel, MTV, and the BBC. Since coming together under the UVA moniker, the team has tackled Massive Attack's 2004 tour, Vince Foster, Basement Jaxx, and now, U2.
What sets UVA apart from a lot of other visualists is in the combination of code with content, as well as custom hardware configurations. The team members' roots in the rave and VJ scene have given them a very different outlook and approach to media serving and manipulation when approaching a show.
UVA's software controller, Dragonfly 2, has gone through development and revision while feeding imagery on tour and in installations. Notably, the company was behind the unbelievable deployment of MiPIX used in London's premiere club, Kaberet Prophecy, as well as for the content and operation of the system.
Willie Williams
Bruce Ramus
Stefaan “Smasher” Desmedt
Garry Chamberlain
Russell Lyons
Raffaele Buono
Craig Hancock
Matt Hamilton
Aaron Stephenson
Kes Thornley
12,096 Barco MiSPHERE
| 7 | Barco G10 Projector |
| 5 | Barco G5 Projector |
| 5 | Folsom Encore Image |
Processor
| 54 | Martin Mac 2000 Wash |
| 17 | VARI*LITE VL3000™ Profile |
| 66 | 4-way James Thomas Molefay |
| 24 | ETC Source Four® Ellipsoidal |
14,400 SACO custom LED floor fixture
| 6 | SACO Custom “Factory Lights” |
| 2 | ARRI Daylight 18kW HMI |
Fresnel
| 12 | Lycian M2 2.5kW Followspot |
| 4 | LSD 360° Swivel Seat |
| 8 | LSD Ontop Seat |
| 16 | ChainMaster 1-Ton Hoist |
| 28 | 8' LSD D3 Truss Section |
| 14 | 4' LSD D3 Truss Section |
| 18 | LSD D3 Truss Cube |
| 18 | 10' Tomcat Medium Duty Truss Section |
| 4 | 8' Tomcat Medium Duty Truss Section |
| 2 | 5' Tomcat Medium Duty Truss Section |
| 1 | 24' ID Total Structures Truss Circle |
| 32 | Martin Atomic 3000 DMX Strobe |
| 32 | Martin Atomic Color |
| 6 | Reel EFX Diffusion™ DF-50 |
| 2 | High End Systems F-100™ Fog Generator |
| 8 | Reel EFX Fan |
| 1 | UVA “DragonFly” media server |
| 1 | Oxygen8 Midi Keyboard |
| 1 | Sony PlayStation® Handset |
| 2 | Flying Pig Systems Wholehog 3 Console |
| 2 | HES Wholehog® 3 USB Playback Wing |
| 6 | HES DL1 |
| 2 | Touchscreen Monitor |
| 1 | 32-way ClearCom Intercom System |
| 4 | ETC Sensor® 48-way Dimmer Rack |
| 4 | Motion Labs 72-way Distro Panel |
UVA LONDON
PRG
Barco
Innovative Designs
XL Video
SACO