Celebrating McFly’s 21st anniversary and Busted’s recent chart-topping album, Greatest Hits 2.0, the warring Noughties’ bands took their Busted vs McFly tour of UK and Ireland on the road for 35 dates this year.

PRG UK supplied a full production package of lighting, video, automation and rigging along with four lighting and eight video crew.

The tour’s design brief centred around an ‘enormous monolithic structure’ with a kinetic ceiling of lighting pods, a 16m x 8m LED back wall, two 5m x 7m IMAG screens and a 4-sided 13m x 2m automated banner screen that drops into stage level to aid the transition between sets. The result was a dynamic space, with the forestage set in a diamond orientation, that enabled lighting designer, Sam Parry, and video programmer/operator, Thomas Hunter, to create two distinct styles for the bands within a cohesive whole.

PRG supplied 52 Ayrton Veloce Profiles with Parry rigging 12 on the upstage walkway, 16 on the front-of-house V-truss and six each on four of PRG’s new ladder systems that flanked the central LED wall. 20 ACME Pixel Line LED strips were also rigged vertically on the upstage ladders between the Veloce Profiles.

Complementing the Veloce Profiles were 14 Ayrton Perseo Profiles and 14 GLP JDC Burst 1 strobes located on the pyro shelf outlining the stage edge.

14 GLP Impression X5 were rigged on the front-of-house V-shaped truss covering the stage wash, with 34 Roxx Cluster fixtures acting as audience blinders.

PRG was also able to bring together the essential 100 Ayrton Zonda 9 FX fixtures that populate the four kinetic lighting pods in a 5×5 matrix.

The whole ceiling structure comprised four independent square lighting pods, set at a diamond offset to mirror the stage. Each pod was on a four-way Moveket hoist, supplied by PRG with Moveket’s own main and backup consoles. The sections were pre-rigged on PRG dollies for a ‘bolt and go’ solution.

The tour’s followspot provision comes from seven Robe iForte LTX rigged front-of-house with PRG Ground Control remote operation. Haze was provided by four Hazebase BaseHazerPro machines with Martin AF1 fans to aid distribution.

Control was from two grandMA3 Full Size and 1 grandMA3 Light control consoles supplied from PRG stock.

PRG employed Thomas Hunter for the tour’s video programming and operation. “I enjoyed the repetition and refining possibilities that a tour gives, and it was important to me to deliver a consistent show so the audience got the same experience at every venue,” he says.

To help him achieve this, PRG supplied 256 INFiLED AR5.9 video tiles for the 16m wide by 8m tall upstage LED wall, 140 INFiLED AR5.9 video tiles for the two flanking 5m wide x 7m tall IMAG screens (70 per screen), all of which were running on Novastar MX40 processors.

The automated LED banner screen, also hung from a 4-way Moveket hoist, formed a four-sided 13m x 2m box surrounding the automated ceiling, and was faced with 104 ROE Vanish V8T LED tiles running on ROE EV4 processors.

PRG supplied two Disguise GX3 media servers functioning as director (main) and understudy (backup), with both being fed two camera mixes cut via a BlackMagic ATEM switcher and manipulating the feed with live effects created in the Notch framework.

Finally, PRG also supplied the full camera system including four Sony camera heads (two on long lens front-of-house, and two pit cameras on track at the front of the stage), plus four Sony CCU channels and all necessary monitors and time code equipment to run them.

“It was a long tour with a relentless schedule across the biggest venues in UK and Ireland, so consistency of delivery and product performance were vital,” concludes Sam Parry. “We opted to go with PRG as our supplier because they had what I wanted with people that I knew. We’ve had a good relationship for a number of years and my experience has always been positive. Working with Steve Major and Yvonne Donnelly Smith especially has been great. They deliver what I want every single time I ask for it.”