Maxedia, Maxxyz Master Usher Concert

Armed with the latest software versions of the Maxxyz lighting console and Maxedia Digital Media Composer, lighting director, programmer and board op Eric Wade and lighting designer Peter Morse have “ushered” in a new era for Maxxyz lighting control and Maxedia digital effects.

On March 5th Showtime Network broadcast a live concert by Usher, "One Night, One Star Usher Live,” during the network’s "Big Fat Free Preview" weekend. The concert, which took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, featured hits from Usher’s latest multi-platinum selling album "Confessions," and marked the first and only time the star will perform a full-length live show on television in 2005.

The set was the same as that of Usher's "Truth" world tour, a MAC-dominate rig of MAC 2000 Wash and MAC 2000 Profile with other automated lights, Sychrolite 3Ks, Par Cans and Color Kinetics ColorBlast LED. A major difference for this show however was the addition of digital effects courtesy of the Maxedia Digital Media Composer.

Maxedia impresses
After using the Maxedia on a prior Usher shoot – a DVD recording taped before the Puerto Rico show – Peter reportedly loved it. “Peter’s the one who really pushed to get it for Puerto Rico, and Hamish fell in love with it,” commented Eric Wade. “So we incorporated it into the show. We already had a lot of the show done, so we went back and added more Maxedia content and made it better.”

Both the Puerto Rico concert and the world tour incorporated video LED walls; a large LED screen in the center of the stage used mainly to show close-ups of Usher, and four smaller moveable screens below to show preproduction video.

As Peter Morse was interested to see the Maxedia in action, the Martin media server was to be used in addition to the video LED screens. For close-up and wide shots, the original plan called for Maxedia to fill-in only the lower screens when no video was shown.

During rehearsals however, video director Hamish Hamilton was impressed by the features possible with the Maxedia. Evidently, at each rehearsal he would venture back to FOH, wanting to see new material. The result was more and more Maxedia images incorporated into the actual performance. In fact, during certain songs only Maxedia images were shown on all screens. 

“The deeper we got into rehearsals the more and more we used Maxedia because we found more places to put it,” Eric comments. “We ran one on the large LED screen that’s upstage center and a second Maxedia on the four small LED panels, more like scenic pieces. That’s our new combination – Maxxyz and Maxedia.”

Graphical User Interface
What made this possible was the Maxedia’s Graphical User Interface (GUI). Competing products can only run on DMX orientated channel assignments for functions inside the video servers. With the intuitive Maxedia GUI screen, accessible through a touch-screen, the video director could easily follow what was happening during the programming of the Maxedia. The result was the creation of many more cues on a very limited production schedule.

The Maxedia cues were added to the existing Maxxyz show file and triggered together with the light cues. In order to keep a harmonic stage look, the lighting was sometimes cloned with the LED screens - something never seen on competitive systems since those systems basically play loaded video files. Peter and Hamish reaped the benefits of this ‘on-the-fly’ on-site programming.

Multiple cues were created and fed to the video personnel. And the more rehearsals there were, the more that live camera on the LED screens was replaced with images from Maxedia. New cues were even being programmed the last day.

The original intention was to trigger Maxedia through Artnet from the Maxxyz console. The programming for this was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon but due to a fire in the building the entire afternoon, including the scheduled rehearsal time, was gone. Eric then asked if the Maxedia could be run live through the GUI instead of the Artnet input, since only two hours were left before the doors opened.

It could. And everything reportedly went flawlessly.