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The two companies worked together to provide lighting for the Games Ceremonies in Jakarta, celebrating their first collaboration via the PRG Alliance network.

The 18th Asian Games was a pan-Asian multi-sport event held from August 18th till September 1st in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang. The event hosted athletes from 45 nations and had the second-largest programme in history with 40 sports, including the launch of eSports.

PRG was commissioned by the local organizing committee as lighting provider for the opening and closing ceremonies and collaborated with the Indonesian company Energi9 Perkasa to deliver the services. This partnership combined the international know-how and large inventory of PRG with Enegy9’s understanding of the local scenario and support in technology, labor and logistic services.

The opening ceremony’s main eye-catcher was the 26 meter-high mountain with the waterfall in the background. The lighting kit included over 900 Moving Lights from PRG, Vari-Lites, Clay Pakys, Robes and GLPs, SGM Q7 LED floodlights and a GrandMA 2 system, as well as 14 fog and haze machines for special effects. The same equipment was used for the closing ceremony also.

Moments of the Opening Ceremony

“The Asian Games is a great event for Indonesia and one of its goals is to leave a heritage for the host country. The collaboration with PRG for the ceremonies gave our company the opportunity to invest in new equipment and employ more people, which contributes to the growth of our company and creates a technology legacy for future events”, said Benyamin Ellyas, CEO of Energi9 Perkasa.

The addition of this new member in Indonesia increases the reach of the PRG Alliance network even more, the premier global network of technical production services for entertainment and live events, which today is present in 28 countries.

10 times lighter than a regular screen and with an unprecedented 70% transparency, the PURE10 is the eye catcher on U2’s stage.

Other tech innovations are the PRG SPACEFRAME™ and Domino for the round video floor.

PRG Projects was visiting some highly innovative companies in China only 1.5 years ago, when they met NEXNOVO – specializing in ultra-thin advertising solutions. Frederic Opsomer stipulated to have been especially impressed by the high level of focus of NEXNOVO”. Barton Lin, COO of NEXNOVO was immediately intrigued by the challenges: “Our product was initially designed for fixed installations, PRG Projects brought the professionalism and knowhow to use the advantages of the technology and adapt it for a concert-touring reality”.

From there, it all went very fast: the design phase started in November and was ready in January. The production started immediately in China, where the electronic components were built. Everything was shipped to Belgium mid March for the assembly and the mechanical part: a full carbon fibre structure.

Jake Berry, Production Director U2, states that without the PURE10, this setting for U2’s eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour would not have been possible: “After the Joshua Tree Tour, we wanted to raise the bar even higher. We wanted a wider screen, in combination with a flying catwalk. At that moment, it simply seemed impossible. The weight limits of the tour’s stadiums would have been exceeded”.
The P10 was constructed especially to minimize weight, at an uttermost high resolution and transparency. Weighing only 10 kg/m2, the design dream became reality.

Carbon fiber 

Frederic Opsomer adds “We think in solutions, for the PURE10, we pushed the technology to the limits of its abilities, doubled the regular width to limit the amount of pieces, and at the same time guaranteeing the highest possible transparency.”

It is fair to say that the PURE10, with its carbon fiber structure, reduced the suspension load of the screen by half in comparison to the technology that had been provided on the previous tour. This change of screen allowed to introduce more features on the catwalk, whilst even reducing the overall weight of the rigg. 

Carbon Fiber had proven to be an excellent choice for the PRG SPACEFRAME™, and its strong, reliable and very light characteristics made it perfect for PURE10 as well. In the future, the structural advantages of carbon fibre compared to aluminum or steel will further be explored. By investing and following up the continuous development, PRG will be able to create custom solutions in a much faster way.

Green

The revolutionary low weight of PURE10, combined with the smart stacking in custom designed dollies, saves space. That leads to an optimization in transport and reduction of the green imprint.

“In every development we do, we try to solve a green issue. It is actually one of our top 3 questions, together with: ‘are we making a creative solution? ‘and ‘are we allowing designers to propose an innovation to their customers?” explains Opsomer.

Not only it has a positive impact on transport, but we’re also facing limited storage space in most venues.

Stuart Heaney, PRG Crew Chief, is particularly happy about the set-up of PURE10: “The time to set-up the screen, including the interdependencies with other teams involved is 8-9 hours. If we would be solely constructing the screen, everything would be built up even faster, in under 3 hours. Tearing down takes 2.5 hours, and that again is with all integrations being removed.”

Ric Lipson – partner at Stufish – has been in charge of design and architecture for multiple U2 shows. He reflects on the collaboration with PRG: “in this long-standing relationship with PRG, we love how they are always innovative. They come with weird and wonderful ideas and make them happen”.

The PRG SPACEFRAME™ allowed the enormous screens of last year’s tour Joshua Tree Tour to resist wind loads. For Beyoncé’s and Jay Z’s tour there was even a moving element added, allowing the screens to open and close, despite weather conditions. PRG SPACEFRAME™ is also used in this year’s design and PRG Projects is already looking at the future: With PRG SPACEFRAME™ we incorporated structural elements into the video screens. We are now experimenting to do the same with lighting, automation and other combinations. The PRG SPACEFRAME™ technology definitely has a lot of yet unveiled opportunities.

Live Design Magazine has named PRG Projects’ PURE10 as the best LED Screen for this year's 2018 Video and Projection Product awards!

It was chosen by a panel of prestigious video/projection designers and programmers, from amongst a field of our esteemed peers. PRG is so proud of the talented team that made this innovative technology a reality.

Jointly owned VER and PRG to be largest entertainment and equipment and services provider

NEW YORK – August 22, 2018 – PRG announced today that VER has emerged from Ch.11 bankruptcy as a reorganized company led by Jere Harris and controlled by The Jordan Company, GSO Capital Partners and PRG Management. VER will continue to exist and maintain its focus as a traditional business-to-business subrental platform, renting to AV staging companies and industry professionals. Full-service solutions will transition to become a part of PRG. PRG and VER will operate as two separate companies in North America, and by focusing on their respective areas of expertise, each will be equipped to meet evolving client needs and offer solutions, resources and expertise even better than before.

“For more than 20 years PRG has been diligent in offering its clients the best production service and equipment in the entertainment industry. Growth across disciplines, markets and geographies has always been a key part of our strategy,” said Jere Harris, PRG’s chairman and CEO. “Now, our ability to support all types of entertainment productions globally will take on new meaning, raising an already high bar to an unprecedented level.”

PRG is already well established in concert touring for its lighting, video, media servers and staging innovations. Combining that with VER’s tour audio gear and expertise, the company can now provide a complete suite of services for tours, festivals and events. Further, PRG can enhance its long history in television production and expand its work in the film industry as VER brings world-class expertise in the video camera market, lighting, display and a robust suite of cameras. VER customers will benefit from PRG’s scenic and automation expertise, vast lighting inventory and its position as the exclusive rental house for PRG’s patented proprietary lighting products.

VER and PRG will have approximately 70 locations across six continents. Clients will have improved access to an extraordinary array of equipment from all major manufacturers as well as specialized and proprietary equipment.

“We believe that this approach will bring about innovation, an exciting level of service, and even more transformative collaboration with our partners. It feels historic, not only for PRG and VER, but for entertainment industry,” said Harris.

The entities will be commonly controlled by The Jordan Company, GSO Capital Partners and PRG Management. Jere Harris will serve as chairman and CEO of the combined company, Stephan Paridaen will be president and COO of the combined company and Bob Krakauer will serve as CEO of VER.

Updated PRG SPACEFRAME™ and new Ingest product on Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “On the Run II” Tour

LOS ANGELES – July 9, 2018 - Production Resource Group LLC, (PRG), the world’s leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, announces two product innovations – PRG Infinity SPACEFRAME™ and PRG Ingest – which are supporting Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “On the Run II” Tour. The new Infinity SPACEFRAME which serves as a kinetic backdrop on stage and Ingest, a new technology that archives camera images created on tour, are industry firsts.

PRG SPACEFRAME™
PRG’s SPACEFRAME™ is an innovative carbon fiber touring frame created by PRG Projects, a division of PRG which specializes in developing and integrating proprietary solutions to the rigors of the production and entertainment industry. It was launched on 2017’s U2’s “Joshua Tree” Tour and “On the Run II” is the second concert tour to feature the product. For this tour, Stufish (the designers of both “Joshua Tree” and “On the Run II” tours) wanted to have a clean look, visually eliminating all support structures and rigging. To do that, PRG Projects came up with a solution called “Infinity SPACEFRAME™” where the rigging and support structure are integrated on the back of the SPACEFRAME™, invisible from audience view. Video content on the screen is now edge-to-edge without visual barriers as a classic screen would have. It gives it a monumental look and creates a new type of immersive viewing experience. The Infinity SPACEFRAME™ makes the most of the PRG SPACEFRAME™ concept by utilizing the structural capabilities of the video screen as part of the automated tracking support. It ultimately saves truckloads of additional support structure.
“Designing custom LED and video solutions for live events is a core part of what PRG Projects does. Beyond what we develop for PRG, we work directly with designers to create unique staging solutions that allow them and performers to be as creative as possible,” said Frederic Opsomer, managing director, PRG Projects. “We are constantly thinking of what is next, how do we improve on what we’ve already done. The new Infinity SPACEFRAME™ allows for moveable LED screens in an operational effective set up which aids the dynamic energy Beyoncé, Jay-Z and other performers create during the show.”

The stage design for “On the Run II” Tour includes two LED screens with SPACEFRAME™. The secondary – or upstage – screen is 55 feet x 35.4 feet (16,8-meter-wide and 10,8-meter-high) with ROE’s CB8 LED. The bottom section of the upstage screen is automated with three SPACEFRAME™ panels that open like garage doors, enabling the musicians’ rolling risers to enter and exit the main stage. The upstage screen stands behind a four-tiered opera box style performer platform. The main - or downstage - screen is divided into 12 automated sections. This allows for different dramatic scenes and settings and provides Beyoncé and Jay-Z different entry and exit scenarios. The new Infinity SPACEFRAME™ screen, with GALAXIA’s WV9 air transparent LED, measures 173.2 feet x 43.3 feet (52,8-meter-wide and 13,2-meter-high) when closed and hangs on motorized carts that move left and right on a track. The carbon fiber fabrication and built-in wind bracing provides the stability that structural engineers demand in order to have a screen of this size move around on a track.
“There is currently no other framing system that can do this, it’s a perfect example of designers really pushing the product to the limits and having free reign for their ideas. A symbiosis rarely seen in our industry,” said Opsomer.

PRG INGEST
“On the Run II” Tour is also implementing PRG Ingest. Ingest is a new technology that allows the capture of concert footage in real time from up to 24 isolated camera feeds. Each camera feed - or channel – will be ingested in the server, processed, and via the network pushed to an external storage drive.

Traditionally, footage from a single camera is captured on a single recorder, then after a show, each file on the drive is copied over to a separate hard drive. This is an intensive process that can take many hours as the transfer can take up to one hour per camera.

“With the Ingest system, we can create a show record on an external drive of all channels in nearly real-time and still have a back-up copy on the server should anything go wrong,” said Wolfgang Schram, director of video engineering, PRG. “The servers also get time coded, so all recordings have real time and can be used in an edit right away.”

In order to handle the 6.2 TB of data that “On the Run II” Tour generates per night, PRG uses six media servers which simultaneously make copies of what is recorded, transcode it to a pro res 422 file and push it over a 10GigE network on an external NAS drive.

PRG Alliance member Visual Europe Group collaborated with FINA to deliver LED screens and lighting for the FINA Men's Water Polo World League Super Final 2018, which took place on 18-23 June 2018 at the Duna Arena in Budapest.

The audience in the arena could see every angle of the matches due the LED screen supplied by Visual Europe Group, who was also in charge of content creation and control. In total they delivered 370 square meters of LED panels for perimeter wall, screens and scoreboards.

On the first day of the event there was an opening ceremony with a special performance by acrobats in aerial silk and hops over the swimming pool – where the lighting technology provided for the event highlighted the show.

Here is a short video from behind the scenes:

Universal Brand Development and Fast Live Productions, a joint venture between Epsilon Partners and Brand Events, have called upon the expertise of PRG and Panasonic to create ground-breaking projection mapping in order to push the boundaries of live event production. 

PRG, the full-service technical production specialist, and Panasonic, the Japanese manufacturer of projection and AV systems, are currently touring the UK and Europe, delivering spectacular AV and projection on Fast and Furious Live – the action-packed live arena show celebrates the Fast and Furious film franchise and features fast cars, record-breaking LED, precision driving and 3D projection mapping.

Seamless delivery
Fast and Furious Live is the brainchild of Rowland French, creative director and executive producer of Fast and Furious Live, who drafted in the expertise of Simon Aldridge, production director, Tom Rees, project manager, Ala Lloyd, set designer and Bruno Poet, lighting designer, to produce the arena show. 

Aldridge approached James Morden, project director LED at PRG XL Video, in early 2016 and began discussions on how best to deliver Fast Live Productions’ desired vision for the high octane and fast-paced touring production.

The arena show, which had its world premiere at The O2, features a 8k resolution screen that measures 26 metres wide and nine metres high and comes complete with five doors that raise to allow the stars of the show – 42 vehicles – to seamlessly enter and exit the show floor. 

Morden, responsible for the tour’s video elements, worked with Aldridge to develop a spectacular production that would help place the audience in the show’s narrative. To achieve this end, it was, therefore, vital that PRG worked in close collaboration with Panasonic, BlackTrax and Brilliant Stages to create important elements for the technically advanced live event.

On track
Fast and Furious Live’s end screen plays a pivotal role in the show, as do 48 Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors, which provide incredible detail, clarity and colour perception. 

The show’s content – developed by Kate Dawkins Studio and Dandelion and Burdock – was custom-made to fit Morden’s original pixel map that was created in March 2016: Almost two years before the show debuted to a packed audience of Fast and Furious fans. 

To develop a spec, Morden, alongside PRG’s Stefaan Michels (director of music), Leroy Murray (projects director) and Chris Holz (project manager), assessed the show’s other elements – venue constraints, scenery, effects, lighting, audio and rigging – before deciding upon a basic projector arrangement.

Morden explained: “Once we had confirmed final technical delivery requirements, we increased our ownership of Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors and fibre distribution equipment in order to deliver 48 blended projectors across the show floor and huge end wall.   

“On the server side, we also increased ownership of Disguise 4x4pro servers [formerly d3), with SDI VFC cards and acquired further Notch licenses for real-time visual effect generation.” 

He continued: “The big technological aspect of the job for PRG was BlackTrax technology – this is a real-time 3D environment object tracking system, which was pushed further than it has ever been before.

“BlackTrax allowed us to place markers onto objects such as cars, actors and scenic pieces and through an array of infrared cameras, we are able to locate them in real-time. This enabled the team to cut projected images. We knew that by using this tech we could safely project a floor image onto the floor and not on the roof of a moving vehicle,” Morden continued. 

“Furthermore, myself and the team were able to take a live position feed from Brilliant Stages’ automation system in to our media servers so that we did not project content when the doors in the end wall were raised.”

Driven team
Four projectionists, one media server programmer/operator and a BlackTrax engineer are currently touring the UK with Fast Live Productions, ensuring all video and projection elements on Fast and Furious Live run smoothly. Now that the show is touring, the crew begin loading in at 4am and within 36 hours (multiple shifts), the entire show is built and flown: Projectors are lined up, trimmed for colour and intensity and BlackTrax is calibrated.

Morden praised the incredible “team effort” that it has taken to deliver a show that will visit 24 cities in 15 countries, including Germany, Switzerland and Spain. 

Morden said: “This project has required the amazing hard work and effort of an experienced team. From the very beginning, we have ensured that even small challenges have not impacted on what is a huge production. 

“For example, we had some custom metalwork fabricated to better rig the projectors. This simplified the rigging process and speeded up load in and load out.

“While the sheer scale of this endeavour is daunting, and expectations on this project are extremely high, one of the biggest challenges on this project has been the packaging: In other words, how we present the equipment to go out on tour, to make the rig as simple to build as possible and as easy to manage and de-rig.  

“Thankfully, we have an incredibly bright and efficient team that decided upon ‘projector doughnuts’; a relatively simple solution to keep projectors in pairs for travel, as well as rigging. This has reduced the number of projector boxes from 50 to 26. This means less trucking and packing and has made load in and load out easier and faster,” Morden concluded. “Or should that be more fast and furious!”

During the spring our members in Hungary and Greece were busy with collaborations in the corporate events sector.

The Roche Global Convention 2018 took place at the Hilton Hotel in Athens. The event was organized by Roche Brazil who is already a long-term customer of Alliance BR. It was the first time that Roche took the opportunity to have the same services for their events abroad via our PRG Alliance member in Brazil. 

The challenge for this event was to have a large and curved high-resolution LED wall that would provide great video quality to the participants situated very closely to the screen. The cooperation with Sound & Visual, PRG Alliance partner in Greece, was the ideal solution for this event. They provided the 28 meter long curved wall with a pitch of 3.9mm – resulting in a resolution of over 7.000 pixels wide. The crew was composed of Brazilian technicians who have a long history of collaboration on Roche events as well as Greek technicians who know the local equipment and the venue very well. 

Roche Global Convention in Athens

Likewise was the collaboration between PRG Chicago and Visual Europe Group, PRG Alliance partner in Hungary, for the medical conference Unlock the Unlimited at the Marriott Hotel in Budapest. The detailed technical plan provided to the client prior to the event gave them the confidence that they would benefit in  consistency for their events worldwide.

“Our teams have a shared opportunity to support one another and add a new dimension to services provided to our clients globally. This synergy provides us the advantage of focusing on the quality of the delivery and avoiding excessive travel costs”, says Daniel Gerdes, Director of Global Accounts for Corporate & Events at PRG.

Our members are ready to show our clients what we can do together on their next event.

Unlock the Unlimited congress in Budapest

Production Resource Group, L.L.C. (PRG), the world’s leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, welcomes a new member to PRG Alliance - its global network of technical production services. The new addition brings PRG Alliance to the CEMAC Region, comprising of the countries Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo.
 
The chosen local partner is Easy Group, a Douala based company providing solutions in operational marketing, event management, professional printing and audiovisual system integration to the Central Africa region. The company showed a substantial growth in the past ten years with focus on fashion shows, corporate events, television and private weddings.
 
Since PRG already provides technical production services for events in the region, a partnership with a company that can give local support with high-quality services is crucial for future developments as the area is increasingly attracting corporate and sport events.
 
“The PRG Alliance is not only a way to support our clients wherever they go, it is also a resource pool, a place to collaborate on the development of new projects and to discuss about how to overcome the challenges in our industry together.” – says Tom Van Hemelryck, CEO Central Europe and PRG Alliance Director at PRG.
 
“We have arrived at a stage of our company development where we need to understand the future of event technology in order to be able to set the trend in Central Africa. We recognize the capabilities that PRG Alliance brings to the table and we know this is the right approach for us.” – says Willy Ngassa, CEO of Easy Group.
 
PRG Alliance is present in the main event destinations – in total the group is represented in 29 countries.

From left to right: Tom Van Hemelryck, CEO Central Europe of PRG and PRG Alliance Director; Willy Ngassa, CEO of Easy Group;
Luciana Rosa, PRG Alliance Account Manager and Jesse Happy, Marketing & Commercial Manager of Easy Group.

More information about Easy Group at https://www.prg.com/alliance/en/members/easy-group