MSE: Tell me about working during the run of the show?
SD: During the day, before the show, I work with Willie on the visual and graphics side. I make sure that the segues are okay and all of the little details are correct; it is a fun job.

During the show, I gave my d3 work to Stefaan Venbesien, who is acting as assistant director now, because I couldn’t do both. When I was cutting a 12-camera show and trying to do all of the d3 work at the same time, it just created chaos in Barcelona during rehearsals. So, I got him on board and showed him how it all works and to do all of the d3 cues; it is quite pleasant. He is from Belgium, as well. He had not worked with d3 before this show, but he picked it up in no time. I trained him for a week in Barcelona, and he dived right into it with no problems. The video crew chief is Patrick Vansteelant from XL Video.

MSE: How are you enjoying your new responsibilities as the video director for the U2 360° Tour?
SD: It is quite fun actually. Once we got rolling, you deal with the daily changes, which are not too big. For me, it is rolling well. I am glad that they cut off a lot of the load-out time. I am quite happy with that.

U2 360 Tour Video Personnel
Video Director: Stefaan “Smasher” Desmedt
Video Director: Tom Krueger
Video Assistant Director: Stefaan Venbesien
Video Content Producer: Sam Pattinson
Video Content: Catherine Owens
Video Content: Hiroshi Sugimoto

XL Video
Chris Mounsor: XL Managing Director
Paul Wood: XL Project Manager
Richard Burford: Technical Director
Alan Drake: Installations Engineer

Video Crew
LED Tech/Crew Chief: Patrick Vansteelant
Video Engineer: Bob Larkin
Video Engineer: Myway Marain
LED Tech: Jan Bonny
LED Tech: Jeroen “Myway” Marain
Camera Operator: Mark Cruikshank
Camera Operator: Gordon Davies
Camera Operator: Luke Levitt
Camera Operator: Eoin McLoughlin
Video: Oliver Clybouw
Video: Tobias Kokemper
Video: Frederik Goemaere, Barco
Video: Jan Paulsen

U2 360° Tour Selected Equipment List

Barco Video Screen
It totals around 500,000 Barco FLX 24 pixels, controlled by DX700s with signal routing over 8 fiber optic links

32 Dolly with 3 Screen Panels of Barco FLX Pixel
8 Dolly with 6 FLX Controllers and 3 Power Units
1 Flight Case with 2 DX700 Processors, 8 Fiber Optics Transmitters
2 Flight Case with 4 Fiber Optics 150m
2 Flight Case with Power Distro 400A to 32A out
1 Flight Case with 25,000 Pixel spares
2 Steel Cart with Tools, Steel, Drills, etc.
5 Flight Case with Spare LED Boards
5 Flight Case with Spare LED Cables
5 Tool Case (LED techs)

Cameras and Control
12 Sony DXC-D55WSPL Cameras
2 Canon HJ-86x Lens with Stabilization
7 Canon HJ-22x Lens
2 Canon HJ-11x Lens
2 Vinten Vector 90s
6 Vinten 250s
2 Kenyon KS-8 Gyro Stabilizers
1 Grass Valley Kayak 200c SD/HD Vision Mixer
1 Grass Valley Kayak 200 Panel
1 Grass Valley Kayak 100 panel
1 Abekas Deveous MX SD/HD DVE
2 UVA d3 Media Servers
1 Medialon Manager V5
1 64x64 Leitch SDI Router
1 Zandar Predator II 24way Multi-Viewer
1 TSL Tallyman Tally/UMD Processor
2 Barco LCN-47 LCD Monitors
3 JVC 17" SD/HD Glass Reference Monitors
5 JVC SR-DVM700 DVD Recorders
1 Trilogy Mentor XL Sync Pulse Generator
2 Stratos DVI Fiber Systems
3 Telemetrics Extended Televator Systems
3 Telemetrics High Performance Robotic Heads
5 Grass Valley 8900 Gecko Frames
1 Toshiba Laptop
2 Grass Valley 8964DEC+FS Analog to Digital Cards
1 RTS/Telex BTR-800 Radio Communication System for Cameras and Directors
3 Drake Joystick Override Box
1 Sonifex 4way Matrix Mixer