When U2 chose Barcelona’s Camp Nou to launch the 360° Tour, Icon International partnered with Mark Haefeli Productions (MHP) to produce the Electronic Press Kit documenting the final days behind one of the most ambitious touring productions ever created.
Working alongside the U.S. production team in the days leading up to the opening concert, Icon deployed multiple HD camera crews across Camp Nou, documenting the enormous operation taking shape inside the stadium: the final construction of the 360° stage, rehearsals, technical preparations, backstage activity, interviews and the atmosphere surrounding the launch of the tour.
The production continued through opening night on 30 June 2009, when the camera operation expanded to four HD units. An Icon editor worked on-site at the stadium, ingesting material and beginning the edit while filming continued, with additional editors working through the night as new footage arrived.
The workflow was designed for speed. Pre-show material was edited ahead of the concert, then updated with footage from the opening night and prepared immediately for international distribution. Icon provided the cameras, sound, production personnel, editing facilities and broadcast infrastructure required to move material rapidly from the stadium through post-production and into multiple international delivery formats.
The production also incorporated aerial footage captured above Camp Nou using a Cineflex V14 HD system mounted to a twin-engine helicopter, another element coordinated and supplied by Icon during the opening concert.
Behind the scenes, it was a sizeable broadcast operation in its own right: camera crews filming throughout the stadium, P2 media being ingested on-site, editors working overnight, HDCAM and DigiBeta material moving between systems, and finished content being prepared while the next stage of the tour was already beginning.
The result was an international EPK capturing not simply the concert, but the extraordinary human and technical operation required to get U2 360° off the ground.
For Icon, it was production at the intersection of music, documentary and live broadcast, delivered from inside Camp Nou as one of the biggest tours in music history prepared to leave Barcelona for the world.