page_title: The Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019
section_title: Stage design and show production
hierarchical_section_title: The Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019 / Stage design and show production
caption_attribution_description: Irish rock band U2 performing at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand on November 8, 2019, during the band's The Joshua Tree Tour 2019
context_page_description: The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 and The Joshua Tree Tour 2019 were two worldwide concert tours by rock band U2 commemorating the 30th anniversary of their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. The 2017 tour visited stadiums over four legs: North America from May to July and in September, Europe from July to August, and Latin America in October. The 2019 tour visited Oceania and Asia in November and December, marking the band's first ever concerts in South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and India. The band played the whole Joshua Tree album during the concerts, which included their first live performances of the song "Red Hill Mining Town". It was the first time the group toured in promotion of an album from their back catalogue, rather than a new release. As part of the tour, U2 headlined the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, in June 2017.
  U2 originally wanted to play a set of one-off shows in the US and Europe to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, but ultimately decided to stage a full concert tour instead.
context_section_description: The set was designed by Stufish Entertainment Architects and built by Tait Towers. Willie Williams provided creative direction for the firms and served as the tour's lighting director. The 192-foot-wide (59 m) stage was fabricated by Tait and supported by a 900 mm (35 in) sub-deck built by Stageco. A 120-foot-long (37 m) thrust extended from the main stage and connected to a 55-foot-wide (17 m) B-stage shaped like a Joshua tree; it represented the shadow of a tree that appeared on the video screen. The B-stage featured two lifts that could lower a keyboard and drum kit below the stage for better sightlines of the band when they performed on the main stage.
  It utilised a touring frame design called "SPACEFRAME" that was created by Production Resource Group (PRG), which has been involved in each U2 tour since 1992. The SPACEFRAME system was made of carbon fibre and was designed to be lightweight, collapsible, and fully wind braced. U2 were PRG's first client for the product, which was delivered from prototype to final product in 17 weeks. As a result of the system's smaller profile, the band were able to reduce the number of trucks required to transport the framing system; a PRG press release claimed a reduction from seven to three trucks, while a Popular Mechanics article said the final tally of trucks was four, saving $225,000.
  The SPACEFRAME system was used to build an LED video screen measuring 200 feet (61 m) wide by 45 feet (14 m) high. The screen comprised 1,040 individual ROE Visual CB8 LED video panels with an 8 mm (0.31 in) pixel pitch. The screen had a resolution of 7,200 × 1,560 pixels. According to The Guardian, it was the largest and highest resolution video screen used on a concert tour. Williams said it was similar in size to the one used on the band's 1997–1998 PopMart Tour but 400 times the resolution. A "delicate curve" in the screen gave what he described as the illusion of the visuals appearing 3D.
  For the 2017 shows, the video screen was painted gold with a silver silhouette of a Joshua tree, tying it to the colour schemes of The Joshua Tree album sleeve and the original tour's stage design. The creative team also chose the colour scheme because they wanted to eschew the standard black colour of an LED screen and instead "own this slab of video as an object, not just a screen", according to Ric Lipson of Stufish. A 30-foot-high (9.1 m) scenic header extended from the top of the video screen, completing the plant's silhouette. Lipson said that the screen "look[ed] like a piece of golden cardboard with a sprayed on silver tree". To paint the screen, extensive effort was required to first disassemble the video panels. Each one comprised eight smaller tiles, each of which was covered by a black "shader", which Lipson described as a "louvered plastic piece" that shielded the LED panel from sunlight to help with contrast. The shaders were removed and replaced with custom gray ones that had been painted gold and silver. To replace the shaders, about 1.5 million screws were removed and re-inserted, a process that had to be repeated after the tour to reinstall the original black shaders so the rented video panels could be put back into storage. Shaders were also installed on the scenic header above the video screen to give the tree silhouette a consistent appearance. For the 2019 shows, the crew opted instead to render the tree silhouette through video, as it would not have been cost effective to reinstall the painted shaders on rented equipment for a shorter tour  halfway across the world.
  PRG provided the tour's 4K (UHD) Broadcast Camera System, the first time it was used on a concert tour. A combination of several products, it connected cameras and LED wall processors via optical fibre cable, a necessity due to the large amount of data transferred and the long distance over which it needed to travel. Designed to operate at the highest broadcast standards, the system provided video at 60 frames per second at a resolution of 3,840 × 2,160 pixels. The broadcast system could be assembled in an hour and be opera
caption: Clayton lit by one of the cantilevered trusses of Bad Boy lighting fixtures
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