'A tsunami of TV shows....'
23 February 2009





Tuesday, 17th February 2009

London. BBC Rehearsals. Brits Rehearsal.

I find myself amid a tsunami of TV shows. I did pre-production on FOUR of them today - two at the BBC, a conference call with Le Grand Journal for 'Canal +', the Parisian TV station and then down to Earls Court for the rehearsal of the Brit Awards. I'm approaching the point where they're all starting to blur into one, so please don't ask any specific questions. At one point I got my weeks mixed up and I thought that on Thursday I had to be focusing lights in the BBC radio theatre, whilst also being on a train to Paris and at the Jonathan Ross show.

It's a curious experience to be part of a team behind an appearance on one of these big TV awards shows. Many of the elements are familiar (and, in the case of the Brits and the Grammys, are in venues which U2 have played on tour) but the fact of our involvement taking up just four-and-a-half minutes screen time of a two hour show inevitably alters the playing field dramatically. On tour we obviously arrange the entire enterprise to serve U2's performance, but here we have so little control over what goes on that often, in the early days of doing these shows, the best you could hope for was damage limitation. Happily things have moved on, and many of the people involved are friends of ours who want to give us all the help possible, but even so we have to respect the fact that they have a huge amount of things to cram into the available time other than the U2 slot.

We got everything ready on the Brits stage, then the band threw themselves into it. After three run-throughs of 'Get On Your Boots', the whole of U2 invaded the video truck to watch the playback. This has become standard procedure for us and it generally proves to be very productive, though, I sense, comes as quite a surprise for the TV engineers. As well as giving direct feedback to the TV director it gives the band a chance to see how their performance looks on ?stage-de-jour', see how any new clothing choices look and to get an overall feel for what's working, before going back out to the stage for a final run at it. Today's viewing was very positive and it's clear that everyone in the truck was quite delighted to have the whole band pile in there. As we left I couldn't help wonder if any other artists would take so much trouble, but then I wondered equally - why ever would they not? Having gone to all the effort of travelling to the event and rehearsing, it doesn't seem like much of an extra mile to go to give yourself the best chance of a great performance under challenging circumstances. Anyway, hopefully that'll set us up for tomorrow.