Maxedia Pixelmapping for Jarvis Cocker

When the award winning team at Electric Fly Productions Ltd. of the UK took on the task of designing the UK and European leg of Jarvis Cocker’s latest tour, they turned to Maxedia as the digital media server for the job.

Using the artwork from Cocker’s latest album, ‘Jarvis,’ as the foundation for the stage design, Nick Jevons created a rig rich in LEDs and deep in novelty.

Ten minute tweak
Most of the early design was created on Martin’s lighting and set design software package, Martin ShowDesigner, back in the Electric Fly studios. This was then manipulated and pixelmapped using Maxedia.

“As we did all the programming in the office, when I got out on site it was all there, I just had to tweak it a bit,” Nick states. And tweak it he did as on the first night of the tour the venue turned out to be slightly smaller than what he had been briefed to believe.

“When we got it up and running at the first venue of the tour we realized it was too tight a fit, so using the Maxedia I was able to do some quick pixelmapping and reconfigured the graphics in just ten minutes. The show still had the same feel and it still had the same movement and textures, which was great.”

Maxedia ease
The Maxedia’s graphical user interface is no stranger to Nick who has employed its features on several prior occasions, most notably the BBC’s One Big Weekend. It was his son Jake (who has joined the team fulltime at Electric Fly) who was at the wheels this time as the Maxedia operator. “You are up and running fast and as it’s hands-on programming, you can get a show within minutes.

“I used a DMX splitter, which meant that I could take over control of the LED fixtures and control them via my console for those spontaneous stabs, and then drop them back onto Maxedia without a problem.”

Maxedia’s comprehensive content library has also meant that all the visual extras of the show were already there for the taking. “Apart from a few things such as the arrow, which I took from the album cover, I haven’t needed to put my own content in. I’m just using the standard Maxedia content which I then tweak a little to make it the way I want.”

And the results spoke for themselves with an innovative tone to match the wonderfully eccentric performance of Jarvis. Maxedia’s pixelmapping meant that the brilliant background visuals and light show worked in unison, seamlessly marrying light, LED and video together. “It’s extremely easy to pixelmap and very user friendly,” Jake concludes.

Following a recent US leg, the Jarvis Cocker tour continues with upcoming festival dates in the UK.