Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of some of the biggest tours in the world? Phil Lamb spoke to live video director Ant Barrett, who worked on Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour.
Imagine lights flashing and crowds cheering as the opening chord of Coldplay’s hit song ‘Yellow’ rings out around the sold out Wembley Arena. As lead singer Chris Martin solemnly strums his guitar, looking out at the tens of thousands of fans, his towering projection is hanging behind him on two large screens. Capturing every moment precisely are a team of high class, camera operators all listening to one man, Ant Barratt.
Ant Barrett is a freelance live video director who’s worked with some of the biggest artists in the world. These include Coldplay, Harry Styles, Lana Del Rey, Phil Collins and Genesis. He says: “Essentially what I’m doing is working in a portable TV studio that travels with global touring artists around the world. I speak to a team of camera operators, much the same as you would do if you’re working in a TV studio”.
Speaking on the Coldplay tour, Ant says: “It’s a huge undertaking, a massive stadium show that involves a huge amount of experienced crew just to make it happen.”
There are multiple departments in the crew: a touring party of approximately 140 people including production, audio, video, lighting, LED, SFX, charity and the heavily publicised “green initiative”.
Ant worked on Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour from 2021 to 2025, with over 225 shows all over the world from London’s Wembley stadium to Chile and Brazil. With so many shows under his belt, the job feels special every time.
“That’s why I enjoy it, there’s always something interesting that can happen, something can change from night to night and it’s not so formulaic as working on a TV show where everything is the same. Maybe you’re coupling the same camera for the same moment every night, night after night. With music, you’re on the edge of your feet seeing what’s going to happen next.”
Speaking about getting into the industry, Ant’s journey started back in 2010. “A friend of mine was working at an equipment warehouse in London that supplies festivals and tours. He knew that I was doing a lot of video work which was outside of the industry, like self-made video work.
“I was going out with a video camera and I was making my own videos, putting them online. These days it would be people who are YouTubers or vloggers, but back in 2010, that type of work wasn’t so established”.
Ant was given an opportunity by this friend to work as a camera assistant at a large UK music festival, setting the whole system up with a large camera team. From this, he worked his way up to different music festivals. “People in this industry are very supportive and will help guide you if you want them to”, he says.
After working as a camera assistant for several years, Ant was given multiple chances to operate cameras while the camera staff took breaks. From this, he was booked as a camera operator for a world tour with Sigur Rós. At the end of the first year of this two year project, the director was leaving the tour to start a family. “He was talking to me about who could replace him, and if I had any ideas. By this point, I had 5 or 6 years experience in the industry and I’d met a lot of people. So we were bouncing names around and discussing who could be his replacement and I took a risk and said, ‘What about me?’
“Things snowballed from there really. Once I had that tour under my belt as a director, I contacted more of the companies in the UK that put together these tours.”
Ant was able to get on tours with big household names like Lana Del Ray and the Arctic Monkeys before working with Phil Collins and his band Genesis. Whilst touring with Collins, he got the call for Coldplay. “If you’re getting a phone call saying, ‘we’re putting a team together, we’re bouncing some names around, your name has come up. Would you be interested in this project?’, obviously you say yes! Thankfully it worked out and that was the next 4 years of my life.”
The biggest part about Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour was the action to cut the carbon footprint of touring. Ant says: “These initiatives don’t specifically affect the video department. However, we all see the positive changes that these initiatives create. For example, there were no plastic water bottles. If you have 140 crew and they’re loading the show into a stadium, instead of having pallets of plastic water bottles, you’ve got water stations dotted around. The crew bring their own reusable water bottle with them.
Waste and recycling was also heavily monitored, and one of the most amazing parts of the tour was that we achieved a milestone in renewable energy use, with our show at Wembley Stadium in 2025 being the first ever stadium show to be 100% powered by grid-connected batteries and renewable energy, with no generators run.”
Ant said he feels he is “incredibly lucky” to have been able to travel all over the world, with his favourite leg of the tour being in South America. “I was in Santiago and planned a personal trip down into Patagonia. I spent a week driving, hiking, and exploring the national park down there, like a bucket list trip.”
I think if you’re doing a job like this, you obviously have to have a love of travel. If you’re someone that feels more grounded when you’re at home, whether you’re with your partner or your family or just happily grounded with your day-to-day routine, then maybe you’re not going to enjoy working in this type of industry. Luckily I absolutely love to travel to different countries, and experience different cultures and places.”
Rounding up, Ant spoke about his current project, Harry Styles’ ‘Together Together’ World Tour. Ant worked on Styles’ ‘One Night Only’ show in Manchester earlier this year, where his newest album ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ was played in full.
Now, Ant and the touring team are three weeks into rehearsals in a secret location, building Styles’ brand new stadium show, and ready to travel the world again for the next two years. PL
Featured image via Stevie Rae Gibbs, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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