A duo of bespoke 32ft (9.75m) projection screens, created to order by AV Stumpfl, provided the backdrop to the innovative, award-nominated set design for The 1975’s recently concluded At Their Very Best and Still… At Their Very Best world tours.
The chart-topping indie-popsters paired the custom projection surfaces with 180,000 lumens of ultra-bright IMAG projection for the critically acclaimed back-to-back tours, which ran from November 2022 to March 2024.
Compared to the band’s previous concert tour, At Their Very Best and Still… At Their Very Best were more personal affairs, with the production emphasising the band itself rather than the highly digital design cues that were central to 2018–2020’s Music for Cars (in support of the social media-themed concept album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships). Whereas Music for Cars leveraged a bombastic set-up featuring several giant, automated LED cubes, the brief for the latest tours, spearheaded by the band and their management, was for a stripped-down, ‘classic’ look that could only be achieved with projection technology.
“The design concept on a 1975 tour is never the ‘same old’ – they always like to do something different,” comments the tours’ head of video, Ed Lawlor of Visual Certainty, who has been working with the band since 2014. Alongside production manager Josh Barnes, tour manager Maarten Cobbaut and creative director/show designer Tobias Rylander, Lawlor was responsible for turning the band’s vision into reality, from early concept drawings to the final product.
Discussions on the direction of the tour design began in the first half of 2022, and while a number of early ideas were discarded on cost grounds, the shows’ core concept – the modular ‘house’ stage design which resembles a deconstructed home – was there from the beginning, according to Lawlor. So, too, he says, was the brief for the video design, which needed to make heavy use of IMAG in order to provide a cinematic experience for fans in every row.
“It was clear from previous tours that the band wanted IMAG to be closely integrated into the overall design,” he explains. “On previous tours, this link was drawn through the use of LED and blurring the lines between IMAG and stage surfaces for live cameras.” For the At Their Very Best and Still… At Their Very Best tours, however, “there was very little on-stage video, and the band’s priorities were for the IMAG to offer more of the wider stage view to the audience further back than usual,” he continues. “This necessitated large surfaces and plenty of brightness.”
For the initial leg of the At Their Very Best tour, which played a mix of arena and large theatre/auditorium-sized venues, a ready-made solution was sufficient: Lawlor and team sourced 24-foot AV Stumpfl Vario projection screens – the largest off-the-peg option available – from PRG’s rental stock, which were paired with two 30,000-lumen Panasonic PT-RZ31K projectors per side.
However, on the band’s return to North America the following year, when they stepped up to playing stadia and outdoor amphitheatres, as well as larger indoor arenas, it was clear a larger solution was needed. “For the bigger venues, management requested a larger option, and it was at that point we commissioned the 32-foot AV Stumpfl screen, which was the largest practical option in a fast-fold product,” Lawlor explains.
AV Stumpfl’s brief was to provide PRG was a rear-projection screen that was “as large as reasonably possible”, recalls Lawlor, with the added caveat that it should be made from standard AV Stumpfl VarioLock parts to facilitate easy set-up, dismantling and transport.
Another challenge was that the screen, despite needing to be as large as possible, could not have any vertical structural elements, he continues: “The upper size limit was set by the inability to have any intermediate vertical members in the structure, and AV Stumpfl were readily able to explain the compromises we would run into at various sizes and ambient temperatures.”
Designed for use with the company’s modular Vario screens, AV Stumpfl’s plug-in VarioLock connectors make it easy to establish a secure connection for larger projection screens with just a swift 90° turn of the quick locking mechanism.
On the Still… At Their Very Best tour, the custom AV Stumpfl screens were used to extend the theatrical ‘house’ set, as well as for select non-tour video showing footage of previous tours and archive film of the band. The standard set-up was two screens per show, “although we carried different sizes for smaller venues, where the extra-large model would not fit,” Lawlor adds. To ensure sufficient brightness over such a large surface area, an additional PT-RZ31K was added per side, bringing the number of projectors to six.
Lawlor says he has been a fan of AV Stumpfl projection screens for “longer than I can remember”, so the Austrian manufacturer was the natural choice to help find a solution for the challenges posed by such an unusual video set-up. “The IMAG screens are very much larger than normal for arena touring, and I’m grateful for the help of PRG and AV Stumpfl in finding a solution that allowed for rear projection in a fast-fold type frame, with no central member that would obscure the beam,” he comments. “With some additional hardware from the Rigging Co. Ltd we spread the two motor points to four pick-ups on the frame, which helps maintain linearity over the long span.”
After 18 months – and more than 150 shows with AV Stumpfl screens – The 1975 wrapped up the Still… At Their Very Best tour with a sold-out show at the AFAS Live arena in Amsterdam on 24 March 2024.
