PRG Supplies Full Production Package for Busted vs McFly

Celebrating the British rock band McFly's 21st anniversary and the British pop band Busted's recent chart-topping album, Greatest Hits 2.0, the acts took their Busted vs McFly Tour of the UK and Ireland on the road for 35 dates this year. The stage was set for a good-natured but highly competitive showdown as the bands battled for their fans' adulation on stage, following an audacious challenge by Busted during McFly's 2024 birthday show.

McFly burst onto stage to open the evening before Busted took over for the second half, the bands finally coming together to battle it out before a grand finale with both bands playing together.

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-by-8m LED back wall, two 5m-by-7m IMAG screens, and a four-sided 13m-by-2m automated banner screen that dropped 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. Twenty ACME Lighting PIXEL LINE LED strips were also rigged vertically on the upstage ladders between the Veloce Profiles.

"My introduction to Veloce more or less sealed the deal!" says Parry, who began his design before Veloce Profile even rolled off the production line. "I've been a big fan of Ayrton for a very long time, and as soon as I saw the Veloce, I knew it was what I wanted for the tour. It's bigger, brighter, and really able to cut through the quantity and power of our other lights, and still deliver a strong, clean beam."

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.

Fourteen 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. "The Roxx are also absolute killers -- they always do a great job!" says Parry.

PRG brought together the essential 100 Ayrton Zonda 9 FX fixtures that populate the four kinetic lighting pods in a 5-by-5 matrix that, without doubt, formed the overarching, dominant feature of the design. Parry used these to sculpt the stage space into innumerable shapes that expanded and contracted the performance area.

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. "We just bolted them together, attached them to the hoists, and flew them out," says Parry. "It made a huge difference to the speed and expedience of getting in and out."

Parry is a great advocate of the Moveket system: "It has a full control console with a really nice user interface. The software does all the calculations for the loads on each point and gives me a technical pre-vis to show me the gradient/angle relating to those hoists before anything even moves. I can just say what I want the pods to look like and the software calculates the weights, angles, and speeds, which is much easier to work with.

"It is incredible how many changes to the shape of the stage and so many configurations I was able to achieve from these four simple sections," says Parry. "Combined with the 360-degree continuous pan/tilt from the Zonda 9 FX, the effects were breathtaking. During McFly's song 'Obviously,' for example, it became almost like a living and breathing structure suspended closely over the band."

The tour's followspot provision came from seven Robe iForte LTX rigged front-of-house with PRG GroundControl remote operation. Haze was provided by four hazebase BaseHazerPro machines with Martin AF1 fans to aid distribution. "We took these on PRG's recommendation, and they do a wonderful job of making everything look pretty and pumping out enough volume to do well even in these really big rooms," says Parry. At 23,000 capacity, Manchester Coop Live is the largest venue in the UK, but all venues on the tour were in excess of 15,000.

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

PRG employed 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 by 7m-tall IMAG screens (70 per screen), all of which were running on Novastar MX40 processors.

"PRG has held this product for a number of years, and it's a reliable product that has delivered well," says Hunter. "I like its color and output, and it doesn't seem to fall off badly like some others. It's a good product which performed really well on this tour."

The automated LED banner screen, also hung from a four-way Moveket hoist, formed a four-sided 13m-by-2m box surrounding the automated ceiling, and was faced with 104 ROE Visnual Vanish V8T LED tiles running on Roe EV4 processors. "We wanted the flexibility of a transparent screen, which was useful for some of the venues with a low ceiling height and also allowed us to play with the lighting when the banner was in," says Hunter. "Plus, ROE products are great! I enjoy working with and installing them wherever budget allows."

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.

"We used Notch running as separate blocks for some fun augmentation of the background on several songs," explains Hunter. "We were able to change the screens to give the bands two very different looks and emphasise the competitive element between them. Busted leaned into it a lot more: McFly's effects were more subtle, whereas for Busted we were able to create some nice punky block color graphics that fitted nicely with their style."

Finally, PRG also supplied the full camera system, including 4 Sony camera heads (two on long lens front of house, and two pit cameras on track at the front of the stage), plus 4 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 the UK and Ireland, so consistency of delivery and product performance were vital," concludes 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 [senior project manager, music] Steve Major and [sales director for music] Yvonne Donnelly Smith especially has been great. They deliver what I want every single time I ask for it."