XL Video renewed its long-term touring relationship with Canadian singer / songwriter, musician, Bryan Adams, who celebrates the 30th anniversary of his seminal Reckless album.

The Reckless album was one of a string of ground-breaking projects that made Adams one of the bestselling Canadian rock artists of all time. The production design for this tour was created by Willie Williams. XL’s Paul “Macca’ McCauley has managed the account for the last three years; he worked closely with Adams’ own video director Marc Ledoux and Encore operator Sebastien De Bellefeuille in co-ordinating and setting up the tour, together with production manager Andy Proudfoot.

Macca comments, “It was great to be working with Bryan Adams and his team again, visuals are a vital element to the stage presentation and he’s an artist with a very keen eye for the potential and impact that judiciously-applied video brings to the whole performance experience.’

At the back of the stage was an 11,4-metre wide by 4,8-metre high surface of XL’s Pixled F-12 LED, which was fitted with a clean, elegant scenic surround each night giving it the appearance of a contemporary cinema billboard. The two side IMAG screens measured 20 x 15 feet and were hung in portrait format, each fed by a rear-projecting Barco HD20K projector.

XL supplied a camera / PPU package comprising a Grass Valley Karrera mixer and four Sony HXC 100 operated cameras, positioned at FOH, in the pit and onstage. Two Bradley CamBall 2 robo cams and two Bradley mini-cams were also part of the camera package, positioned around the stage in quirky places. All of these camera sources were fed from the Carrera into the Encore, and output to screen from there.
Adams also had his own CCTV style black and white camera that was used to capture particular grainy footage for one specific moment in the set. All the playback material was stored on a Catalyst media server system, and these cues were also routed into the Encore and output to the screens.

XL’s crew were engineer Dave Rogers, crew chief Roger Nelson, camera operators Brian Miles and Mark Young and LED technician Connor Canwell. Phil Haines programmed the Catalyst system during production rehearsals ahead of the first gig. The show received rave reviews and the power of Adams’ mysterious performance hailed as every bit as captivating, energetic and emotive as it was 30 years ago, says Macca.