Last month’s journey down the path of vintage projection evoked fond memories for early users of GE Talarias and gargantuan Eidophors. This time around we turn our attention to the early CRT displays themselves — equally cumbersome but progressively modular, before this romantic technology made way for the arrival of LED on a grand scale.

The line for this concluding episode is drawn under U2’s groundbreaking tours of the 1990s, and particularly the pioneering video design work carried out by Frederic Opsomer on PopMart, which realised new standards in touring video.

To complement our front cover, and Mark Cunningham’s report from Barcelona on the latest U2 extravaganza, it seems appropriate that we start with Zoo TV and PopMart, and work back to the 1980s — the decade which spawned the development, and proliferation of I-Mag from companies such as Philips, Mitsubishi and then Sony.

If the decade largely belonged to two men, Screenco’s Dave Crump and Sony’s Graham Burgess (who turned the word ‘JumboTron’ into the generic Hoover for its industry), then U2 is all about Frederic Opsomer.

In 1986, while still a student, Opsomer became involved with the newly-formed company VIP whose primary activity centred around promotional work for cigarette brands in nightclubs and discotheques.

“The main products were simple CRT TV tubes and rear-projection television sets. But when [fellow Benelux company] Philips launched their back-projected Vidiwall cubes [first seen in 1984], VIP were asked if they would be interested in investing in such a product which of course they were,” says Opsomer.

He was promptly offered the job as operational and technical manager — and his career in large format displays had begun.
    VIP quickly became the largest user of videowall products along with near neighbours JVR, which had been set up in the early ‘70s by the late Hans Jongenelen (as Jongenelen Videotechniek) and was subsequently run by his son Jeroen. The growing reputation of VIP and its close connection with Philips Vidiwall led to an introduction to U2 whose records were then distributed by Philips subsidiary, Polygram.

“U2 were in search of a new screen for the European leg of their Zoo TV tour,” Opsomer remembers. “They were put in contact with VIP who proposed a new product under development called Digiwall — a rear projection cube developed by VIP in cooperation with Barco.” The CRT engine was the new Barco 700 in a customised version.

As VIP’s technical co-ordinator it became Opsomer’s responsibility to meet both Willie Williams’ artistic and practical touring requirements of Zoo TV’s cubes.

“When this huge wall appeared the fact that the 36 screens appeared with aircraft warning lights on top of the stacks said everything about its scale.”

Around the same time, Marcel DeKeyser arrived at VIP and wasted no time in setting up the US operation (Lorrymage), who were to purchase one of the three tracking Sony JumboTron screens, later used by Genesis on their landmark 1992 We Can’t Dance tour.

But unrest set in at VIP and in 1995 Opsomer left to and set up his own business as did DeKeyser (the former inaugurating System Technologies and the latter XL Video). While System Technologies focused on the development and manufacture of touring solutions for video screens, XL Video would become one of the world’s leading video screen rental companies.

Frederic Opsomer didn’t need to wait long for U2 to come knocking again as they began to plan the PopMart tour in 1996 which would take the world by storm throughout 1997. Willie Williams’ and Mark Fisher’s design included a large backdrop screen measuring 706m2, but the proviso was that the system needed to be lightweight, transportable and bright.

They had heard about the new LED technology and hoped that its properties would enable them to meet these criteria. They looked at several options, including a video ‘blanket’ with the LEDs on cargo netting.

However, Opsomer was tasked with investigating the possibilities further: “I bought myself a round-the-world plane ticket and visited companies in Taiwan, Japan, the USA, UK and finally Canada. All the companies I visited were involved in LED technology, which was clearly in its embryonic stage.

“However, there was one company that convinced me not only of their technical capabilities but also their commitment to the future of this technology — and that was Saco.”

Saco was run by two brothers, Fred and Bassam Jalbout who would later build the V9 LED display for Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope tour. When Frederic Opsomer presented the company’s technology to U2’s management they were sufficiently impressed to sanction the PopMart screen.

Saco’s role was to develop the electronic parts and Opsomer’s to integrate them mechanically, to enable the vast moving landscape to be set up in a couple of hours, require only two trucks to transport, and be dealt with by just four crew members.

The PopMart construction was the first video wall to be designed and built by touring personnel — Fisher and Opsomer, in conjunction with another legend, the tour’s technical manager, Richard Hartman.

“In a time span of six months, development, prototyping, manufacturing, assembly and transport from Europe to Las Vegas were accomplished, although I have to say we were still installing the last pieces during dress rehearsal!” recalls Opsomer.

The PopMart screen marked the birth of a new generation. “There is only one band in the world who would engage in such a venture — and although the scepticism about LED technology was there, show designers saw a huge amount of new creative possibilities.”

Entirely as a consequence of PopMart, over the following two years the demand for LED went into orbit as Opsomer’s System Technologies continued to focus on making LED screens transportable, developing systems in co-operation with Saco, Lighthouse, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and Hibino.

“The main focus has always been developing mechanical packages — one of the only regrets was that we hardly got involved, or had a say in the development of the electronics.

‘Many times we have been confronted with electronics that could have been designed differently and which would have made life on the road much easier.”

For this reason, when Barco approached the designer in 2005 he was happy to sell the company, which was promptly renamed Innovative Designs, and he has since remained central to many Barco product developments and tour designs.

SCREENCO & THE STADIUM
Fifteen years earlier, over in the UK, Dave Crump was landing his first job in a small AV rental business in the production hotbed of Covent Garden, close to the hugely influential consultants and AV rental house Theatre Projects; this is where many of his future colleagues in Avesco began their careers.

His interest in the big screen industry started with 16mm cine projection but by 1983 he had joined Link Electronics, the Eidophor and GE Talaria distributors (see last month’s edition).

Two years later and the 23-year-old Crump was ready to accept a new job offer at a vastly increased salary when a joint venture was floated between Steve Lakin’s Viewplan (then the biggest AV rental house in the industry) and former Viewplan man, Richard Murray’s newly-formed Avesco. It was to be general manager of a start-up daylight screen company.

Viewplan had managed to suck in many of the key staff from Covent Garden-based Theatre Projects, while Avesco would soon grow to become the force it is today.

Two of the rising stars at Viewplan were also Graham Andrews, and Robin Coles who in 1986 left to form Creative Technology for Avesco, (Coles later moved on to start his own business SPS).

It was in the summer of 1985 that Screenco began, opening its big screen account with the purchase of the first StarVision, manufactured by the English Electric Valve Company (EEV) and the first product to challenge Mitsubishi Electrics’ Diamond Vision.

Mitsubishi was the first company to introduce large-scale video display boards — for the 1980 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium — and by 1983 installed one of the first Diamond Vision video displays. Two screens also went into Twickenham rugby stadium. The product was distributed in the UK by West Nally, for whom Steve Halliday, who now runs the rental department for Mitsubishi, worked.

Back in the mid-’80s it was only major stadiums around the world that could afford the capital investment of large screen video display for close-up views and replays. Therefore a market for transportable displays was identified, initially by the founder of Screencorp in Australia Clive Potter. He took the StarVisions down under while Dave Crump quickly established a burgeoning market for mobile displays in the UK.

The advantage of StarVision, Crump notes, was the incredible weight drop. “Instead of Mitsubishi’s 40-45 tonnes, which took three trucks to transport, the StarVision was only 20 tonnes and travelled on one truck,” he recalls. “It was a massive step forward.”

On at least one occasion, however, its weight got the better of it. On David Bowie’s 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, the 40 tonne display was responsible for snapping the boom of the crane. Supporting such humungous slabs of ironmongery, cranes had to work super-hard in those days; Diamond Visions and StarVisions had to be cantilevered into position on stage roofs in front of stadium stands that had never been designed for such encroachment.

Crump remembers that promoters were fairly cavalier in their approach: “Leon Ramakers at Mojo Concerts, for instance, took a chunk out of Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam and built a hinged a section of terrace to allow the screen in. There were pieces of production that wouldn’t go through the conventional route, which were becoming increasingly part of stadium shows, and so contingencies had to be made to gain access.”
   
HEAVY LOGISTICS
Many people across the industry will recall the massive logistical operation involved in literally dragging StarVision screens in and out of the players tunnel at Wembley and the orange paint left on the roof each time the cranes were forced through on partially deflated tyres.

By then, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA tour had also introduced a further dimension to I-Mag with a pair of Diamond Visions and Crump believes this was the first time anyone had actually toured daylight screens.

However, it could be argued that I-Mag’s coming of age happened precisely on July 13 1985. “Live Aid really put I-Mag on the map and it changed everything,” Crump contends.

Live Aid came too early for Screenco, which was still in the process of being launched, but the following year the company cut its teeth in the major league, providing Brian Croft and Gerry Stickells with the original StarVision they had bought for Queen’s A Kind Of Magic show at Wembley Stadium and Knebworth in 1986. It was suggested that the StarVision could be cantilevered over the downstage edge of the enormous stage.

“Edwin Shirley Staging built an enormous structure using components designed for temporary road bridges and we precariously placed this huge lump of hardware and engineering right over Freddie’s performing area. No safety rails, no access gantries and from what I remember no sleep for about three days, you’d never be allowed to do anything like it today!”

After A Kind Of Magic, StarVision went on to dominate stadium shows with Nocturne or Screenworks generally supplying the cameras.
By the late 1980s PSL had also opened up a dedicated touring division, with flight-cased custom touring rigs, and would soon take a more adventurous approach to projection (in particular embracing the new generation single lens LCD devices from Barco).

But Screenco continued to blaze a mercurial path through the concert touring circuit at the highest level, supporting the Rolling Stones’ 1990 Urban Jungle tour with the 48m2 StarVision (hydraulically folded, 40mm pixel pitch and 1000 NITS... extremely lo-fi by modern standards).

In the year before, Crump had worked alongside Nocturne and Paul Becher in providing StarVision screens for Michael Jackson’s first solo outing: the groundbreaking Bad tour.

But aside from Urban Jungle, 1990 will also be remembered as the year the Sony JumboTron was seen for the first time in the UK. Within two years, a technological breakthrough had been achieved when Screenco fielded three flown Sony JumboTron tracking screens on Genesis’ We Can’t Dance tour.

It took a good deal of expertise from Mitch Clark at Tomcat — who had been approached by Sony’s Chris Sullivan — and Chris Whittock in charge of engineering back in the UK (working with Unusual Rigging) to realise this. Not for the first time, Genesis manager Tony Smith would take a lead role in technology advancement when the band liked it so much, they did a deal with Sony in the US to buy the rig.

This was a quantum leap forward from the previous support Screenco had offered the band, when it fielded a pair of StarVisions for the first time on their 1987 Invisible Touch tour (either working with or against 350 Vari*Lite VL1s, depending on your perspective).

JumboTron had redefined the benchmark. “I remember talking to Pat Morrow at Nocturne when this rumour of JumboTron’s arrival was going round, and Pat said ‘Why would anyone want it brighter?’” chuckles Crump. Within a year everything else was dead in the water.

But the man single-handedly responsible for piloting the various JTS JumboTron models in the UK was seasoned professional Graham Burgess. He had grown up in video since the days when it was a high street retail business. Back then, Steve Lakin was persuading Dixons to take it seriously and REW dominated town centres.

Despite gaining vast experience in the emerging nightclub ‘videotheque’ projections of the early ’80s, he admits most of his training he owes to Sony, whom he joined in 1985.

JumboTron sat alongside Pro Audio, Hi Def TV and Data Recorders within Sony’s Specialist Business Group, a business that had been established by Burgess in 1990.

Yet incredibly, JumboTron was already five years old by the time it was seen in the UK, the original JTS1 having been built for the Expo ’85 World’s Fair in 1985 (with no more than 1000 NITS and a 50mm pixel pitch). This was followed by the JTS2 (1200 NITS), the JTS8 — a 16mm indoor, 1500 NITS display used extensively by Metro Video — working up to the JTS80, which was 22mm and 2500 NITS and JTS 80V (22mm pixel pitch, 3600 NITS).

The JTS80 was replaced by the JTS35 and JTS17, and these were the outdoor displays generally fielded by Screenco which had 200m2 of combined display.

“I realised Sony were coming from a long way back,” Burgess admits. “After all, Panasonic had had their Astra Vision since 1982, Mitsubishi their Diamond Vision in 1980, and that Dave Crump had bought the first StarVision in 1985.”

Shamed by the success of JumboTron in the States, Burgess started actively marketing it in 1991, just in time to pull Michael Jackson’s Dangerous tour the following year.

PLAYING THE FIELD
Still embracing CRT technology at this stage, JumboTron was one of the largest vacuum displays ever manufactured. The display elements were composed of four or eight small pixels within a miniaturised CRT (cathode ray tube).

Soon it was seen beaming down over New York’s Times Square while the largest was located at the Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome) in Toronto, measuring 10m high by 34m wide and costing $17 million.

Sports stadia also helped to break the product in the UK, notably the two 37m2 modular displays at Arsenal FC’s Highbury Stadium.

The advantage of modularity was that the rental company could build it to size the customer wanted. Effectively it could be sold by the square metre in whatever aspect ratio was required, and that made easier for trucking.

Burgess: “It took seven or eight years to work this out as no one was being aggressive in the market. We took our cue from how Tomcat were building the aluminum frames.

“Screenco were given an exclusive operating contract for five years, and this is what provided them with their access to JumboTrons.

“We developed the idea with Dave [Crump] of having compatible equipment in every continent. We did a deal with Clive Potter at ScreenCorp in Australia and also with Screenworks in the US.”

Soon afterwards, Burgess’ secretary interrupted him to say ‘I have Alan Sugar [then chairman of Tottenham Hotspur] on the phone’. As a result, Spurs’ South Stand re-development was completed in March 1995 and included the first giant Sony JumboTron TV screen for live game coverage and away match screenings.

Burgess has many anecdotes that followed the giant stepping stone offered by Arsenal. “I built the screens for Michael Jackson basing the modules on the JVR design [another early JumboTron user] in Holland. In fact JVR had been the first company to purchase a Sony JumboTron system (JTU-8) and make it portable, designing a special truck for it.”

Graham Burgess went to California to talk to Jackson’s people and came back with a contract. “He was a Sony artist at the time but they had never even seen a JumboTron other than in Times Square, and despite his status on the label, Jackson was afforded no special treatment.

“We had 49 days to get two portrait screens built and into Munich’s Olympic Stadium in Munich for the Dangerous rehearsals, helped by Chris Whittock and Dave Gunn who took charge. We leaned heavily on the expertise of Sony Holland and JVR, and came up with a modular concept. We built the rig in a warehouse at Schiphol Airport using fabricators the Dutch had used before.”

Sony, too, had worked with VIP’s Patrick Vyvey and Frederic Opsomer, as well as Lorrymage, knowing they had used Stacklock technology [the kingpin mechanism] for U2 on Zoo TV.

This was a rigging system the designer had purpose-developed and used for the first time on Zoo TV. It enabled cubes to hang from motors and be loaded with other cubes from underneath — the same principle as hanging a stack of speakers.

Opsomer used the same principle to rig these and also the Panasonic Astrovisions held by VIP/Lorrymage.

It was this inventory, and a complex deal involving the purchase of the ex-Genesis JumboTrons, that formed yet another ill fated joint venture, this time between VIP and BCC (later to become Screenworks in the US). After a near fatal accident on a major tour, Opsomer replaced JumboTron’s locking mechanism with a simpler and safer version, helping to establish it as the de facto touring product.

After the initial success in the UK a dedicated European business unit had been deemed necessary to make it work and thus JTE (JumboTron Europe) was set up under Graham Burgess’ supervision.

“It gave us a huge amount of traction because of the co-ordination of all activities, and enabled us to start relationships with companies like Massteknik,” comments Burgess. “In a world without boundaries this was important, and gave us a massive advantage over our competitors.”

Burgess left Sony in 1998, set up Pixel Displays (an Avesco company), shortly after Pixel were bought by Lighthouse, who Burgess joined as a shareholder, leaving them in 2003.

Since 2004 he has run displayLED, a screen brokerage company with a global reach that guarantees to fit the right screen to the right customer, and in addition to new screen sales, covers consultancy, operation and maintenance, procurement and installations.

He reflected: “The Arsenal deal kick-started US$30m of JumboTron business around the world. Everything that Barco, Philips and Lighthouse did began with the Genesis, Arsenal and Frederic Opsomer connection.”
   
EVERYTHING CHANGES
Michael Jackson’s recent tragic passing serves as a timely reminder that the last major world tour for which Screenco used the JumboTron was the star’s HIStory tour in 1997, which was won after an enormous battle with old friend Pat Morrow, who by then had partnered with XL.

Perhaps this marked the end of an era for the CRT screens as LED quickly took over the market. However, Dave Crump will now forever be proud of the fact that he, amongst many others, was involved in both the first and the last of Michael Jackson’s spectacular touring shows.

Says Crump: “The arrival of LED in many respects took the magic out of the business. There was not a huge development cost and theoretically anyone could make an LED screen — it was only board assembly after all.”

Burgess also admits the special times came to an end as the advent of LED encouraged a more commercial approach to the video display business.

“All the fun was about the quirks,” he says. “I remember arriving in Munich with 40’ artics and seeing the power cables to run the Olympic Stadium. They had enough power to run a small city! In those days you were as surprised as anyone when anything worked.”

And his reason for leaving Sony? “I left them because I liked the screen business more than Sony, although I loved Sony. I also knew they were going to get out of the screen business, and from halfway through the era at Lighthouse everything had simply become a business.”

THE FINAL CUT
In closing, it should be emphasised that this feature is governed by a strict timeline. Many fine technicians were developing their art the 1990s in readiness for the Noughties — people like Dick Carruthers, Blue Leach, Chris Bird, Richard Turner, Richard Shipman, with his early exposure to the ArKAos visual synths, Chris Saunders’ advanced video production company, Black Pig, which heralded the age of graphics content creation, and many more.

The founding of XL Video UK in 2000 by Chris Mounsor and Lee Spencer (and their working relationships with Des Fallon and Malcolm Mellows) would also later help to shape the landscape of show production, but that’s another story.