Tony Robinson Touchscreen Media Playback Solution
Envisioning a largely improvisational show, Tony Robinson’s production team for his Cunning Night Out tour knew they would need to rely on a selection of media, both images and video, to be available with instant access. Digital Antics were therefore brought on board by XL Video to create a playback system that would allow the tour manager to access any of Robinson’s associated media within a mere seconds notice.
After being pushed in the mud as Baldrick, scrabbling in the dirt on Time Team and getting to grips with some of the grimiest and Worst Jobs in History, Tony Robinson has come out of the other end of his acting career shining clean with his five times UK-wide tour Tony Robinson’s Cunning Night Out.
A triple-head output system was designed and configured, allowing one signal outputting to the main projector whilst the remaining two powered the operator’s twin touchscreen interfaces. Each touchscreen displayed thumbnailed images or video to be displayed instantly once pressed. The thumbnails automatically scaled themselves to show an equal number of images or video on each screen, allowing for a very user-friendly interface which tour manager Nick Handford operated from the stage wings.
As Robinson’s show progressed, and as he mentioned anything specifically to do with the associated media, the operator could touch the appropriate thumbnail button and the image or video would be projected onto the screen rearing above the stage, thus partnering Robinson’s speech.
The display system can accommodate any Windows media - AVI, WMV and MPEG 1 & 2 - and has since been adapted to tour with Dylan Moran and That Mitchell & Webb Look.