Austin, Texas – 23 May 2005 – Coldplay’s video for its newest single, “Speed of Sound” debuted today—backed up by Versa™ TUBE units from Element Labs. In an unprecedented application, nearly the entire video shoot was done with LED lights from a total of 700 Versa TUBEs. Filmed on a massive sound stage, the video features a delicate, half crescent back wall composed of 640 Versa TUBEs placed on approximately 6” centers. Since the TUBEs were used without diffusion sleeves and the surrounding structure is quite minimal, the lights appear to be suspended in midair.

Production designer Mike Keeling of Project X and director Mark Romanek put together this singular look. “The idea here is having the band on this raw stage and everything is done in silhouette with lighting and key lighting,” Keeling explains. “Once we embarked on it, Mark and I just decided to do the entire video in LED lighting. That was the criterion. I got chills just thinking about it.”

“One of the things that Mark wanted to do was make sure the transition of the LED lighting on the background also replicated what was going on in front,” Keeling adds. “So everything in the front turned out to be a gorgeous, soft front light from the LED source. So we could go no color, we could change it to any color and we could also change it to video feed in the front, which was replicating what we were putting up in the background. Every close-up shot that you see in the video was done with an LED front light. It’s just mind-boggling.”
from elementlabs