"On the Run II" Tour

Update to PRG SPACEFRAME™ and New Ingest Product for Beyonce and Jay-Z "On the Run II" TourThe new Infinity SPACEFRAME™, which serves as a kinetic backdrop on stage, and Ingest, a new technology that archives camera footage created on tour, are product firsts in the industry.

PRG SPACEFRAME™

PRG SPACEFRAME™ is an innovative carbon touring frame developed by PRG Projects-specializing in the development and integration of proprietary solutions for those in the production and entertainment industries. The PRG SPACEFRAME™ was first used on U2's 2017 "Joshua Tree" tour. The "On the Run II" production is the second concert tour to utilize the Infinity SPACEFRAME™. For this tour, Stufish (the designers of both the "Joshua Tree" and "On the Run II" tours) were concerned with a minimalist design in which all support structures and rigging were visually eliminated .PRG Projects developed a product solution called the "Infinity SPACEFRAME™" for this purpose, in which the rigging and support structure is integrated on the back and is not visible from the audience's view. Video content can now be shown edge-to-edge on the screen without visual barriers, as is common with a traditional screen. This feature gives the Infinity SPACEFRAME™ an impressive look and creates a new kind of immersive viewing experience. The Infinity SPACEFRAME™ makes the most of the PRG SPACEFRAME™ concept by leveraging its construction-related advantages as part of its automated tracking support. This ensures savings on further material with additional support structure. "Developing custom LED and video solutions for live events is an integral part of PRG Projects' work. In addition to product solutions we develop for PRG, we work directly with designers to create unique staging solutions that allow our clients and the artists to be as creative as possible" says Frederic Opsomer, Managing Director of PRG Projects. "In addition to new developments, we place great emphasis on consistently evolving existing solutions. The new Infinity SPACEFRAME™ makes it possible to use moving LED screens in such a way that the dynamic energy that Beyonce, Jay-Z and other artists create in their shows can be supported technically as optimally as possible. "The stage design for the "On the Run II" tour includes two LED screens with SPACEFRAME™ technology. The second screen (upstage) consists of ROE's CB8 LED (16.8 meters wide and 10.8 meters high).

The downstage screen features three SPACEFRAME™ panels that open like garage doors, allowing the rolling platforms for the musicians to be moved onto and off the main stage. The upstage screen is behind a four-tiered "opera box" performer platform. The main or downstage screen is divided into 12 automated sections. This allows for different scenes and settings and provides Beyonce and Jay-Z with different scenarios for entering and exiting the stage. The new Infinity-SPACEFRAME™ screen, featuring GALAXIA's WV9 air-permeable LED, measures 52.8 feet wide by 13.2 feet high when closed. The screen hangs from motorized dollies that move left and right on a track on either side. Carbon fiber fabrication with integrated wind bracing provides the stability structural engineers need to move a screen of this size on a track. "There is currently no other frame system with these features. This product is the perfect example of successful, close collaboration with designers who really push the envelope of product development and use their ideas to think of a design in a completely new and free way. A symbiosis that rarely exists in our industry, "said Opsomer.

PRG INGEST

Also in use on the "On the Run II" tour: PRG Ingest. Ingest is a new technology that allows simultaneous real-time recording of concert footage from up to 24 isolated camera feeds. Each camera feed - or channel - is captured by the server, processed and transferred over the network to an external storage drive. Traditionally, footage has been recorded from a single camera on a recorder. After the show, each file is then copied to the drive of a separate hard drive. Until now, this has been a time-consuming process, as the transfer can take up to an hour per individual camera. "With the ingest system, we can create the recording of a show in near real time on an external drive of all channels, plus we generate a backup copy on the server should something go wrong," says Wolfgang Schram, Director Video Engineering, PRG. "The servers are time-encoded, so all recordings are available in real time and can be edited immediately. "To handle the 6.2TB of data that the On the Run II tour generates per night, PRG uses six media servers that make copies of the recorded data, transcode it into a Pro 422 file, and forward it over a 10GigE network to an external NAS drive."