American Idiot: The Musical

CASE STUDY
“AMERICAN IDIOT: THE MUSICAL”
“American Idiot: The Musical”
Touring show relies on Grass Valley for video conversion
CUSTOMER
“American Idiot: The Musical”
americanidiotthemusical.com
CHALLENGE
Feed 40 HD-SDI video sources placed
throughout the set from DVI sources.
SOLUTION
ADVC G1 signal converters from
Grass Valley
BENEFITS
Cost-effective and reliable signal
conversion with a small (1/3 RU) form
factor
BACKGROUND
Following a hugely successful two Tony
Award® run on Broadway, an additional
Best Musical Tony® nomination, and
a Grammy® Award for Best Musical
Show Album in 2011, the rock musical
“American Idiot” is now on a worldwide
tour that will bring the excitement and
great music of the punk rock band Green
Day and its 2004 Grammy Awardwinning multi-platinum album, “American
Idiot” to a theater near you.
The Broadway show closed on April
24, 2011 after 422 performances and
a touring production that began in
December in Toronto, Canada, is now
staging two performances in two
different cities per week.
The touring show and its producer Ira
Pittleman (Work Light Productions) have
a lot to live up to. “American Idiot: The
Musical” won two 2010 Tony Awards,
one for Best Scenic Design of a Musical
(Christine Jones) and another for Best
Lighting Design of a Musical (Kevin
Adams). Mimicking the original Broadway
www.grassvalley.com
set—complete with TV screens that flash
incessant messages—the production
team is traveling with a highly portable
stage show that is set up in about six
hours prior to show time at each venue.
SOLUTION
The show features 37 flat panel HD
screens and three projectors placed
throughout the set (video and projection
designed by Darrel Maloney), of all
different sizes, that are fed by 46
compact (1/3 RU form factor) ADVC® G1
signal converters from Grass Valley™. The
converters are mounted in a doublewide
rack unit, on wheels for easy portability.
The touring company rented all of
the video display equipment used on
stage during each performance from
WorldStage (formerly Scharff Weisberg),
a full-service rental and AV staging
company based in New York. In 2007,
Scharff Weisberg and Video Applications
(based in Southern California) merged
and created a new organization that
offers a larger spectrum of services
while maintaining its legacy principles of
customer service and the highest quality
technology.
“For the touring show, we wanted to
put together a package that was easily
transportable from city to city but it
also had to be rock solid reliable and
easy to maintain,” said Barry Grossman,
chief engineer at WorldStage. “HD-SDI
was the best solution for this tour and
the use of the Grass Valley converters
ensured that the image quality was
superb.”
All of the screens and the projector
are fed by a series of media servers
(United Visual Artists’ d3) that output
a signal into the Grass Valley ADVC G1
signal converters and then on to a video
matrix switch that sends the signal to
the desired display on stage. The ADVC
G1 units convert the signals from DVI to
HD-SDI to maintain the highest quality
on stage. And they have stood up to the
rigors of a traveling stage show.
BENEFITS
“The Grass Valley converters have held
CASE STUDY
“These converters are costeffective to use and they have
the Grass Valley name on them,
which tell us they are made
well and will last us a long
time.”
Barry Grossman, Chief Engineer,
WorldStage
www.worldstage.com
up very well throughout the tour,” said
Grossman. “We chose them because
they are compact in size, which allows
us to get more than 40 ADVC G1 signal
converters in two racks. For us as a
rental house, these converters are costeffective to use and they have the Grass
Valley name on them, which tell us they
are made well and will last us a long
time. We’re very selective about what
we offer in our inventory and recognize
that Grass Valley is synonymous with
high quality images and reliability.
That’s why we recommend them to our
customers whenever the application is
right.”
The Grass Valley ADVC G1 is designed to
convert and/or upconvert video signals
to HD/SD-SDI. The unit will convert and/
or upconvert sources from HDMI, DVI,
component, composite, S-Video, AES/
EBU, and analog to HD/SD-SDI (3G/1.5G
support). The ADVC G1 can also be
used as an audio embedder. It features
a Reference In port that can serve as a
frame synchronizer for analog inputs.
This eliminates the need to purchase
separate expensive equipment.
Like its Broadway predecessor, thus far
the “American Idiot” touring show has
received rave reviews in every city it
has stopped. The tour will finish its US
domestic run in July, and is then headed
for a multi-city tour across Europe for
the remainder of 2012. The same Grass
Valley ADVC G1 signal converters will
wow audiences everywhere they go,
each and every night
ABOUT GRASS VALLEY – THE PREMIER VIDEO TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS COMPANY
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industries, the Grass Valley name is synonymous with innovation,
leadership, and performance. With a full range of products and
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events, Grass Valley offers the most comprehensive portfolio of
software, services and IT infrastructure. Customers deploying Grass
Valley solutions include most of the world’s leading broadcast and
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