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A New Concept in
Portable Screens
The story behind the development of
™
StageScreen
®
and FocalPoint
by
FOUR YEARS AGO, Wayne Wagner was fed up. So the CEO of
Wagner Media, one of the largest wholesale projection screen rental
companies in the United States, picked up the phone. The man he called
was John Pidgeon, the President of projection screen manufacturer
Draper, Inc.
“Wayne called me and said, ‘I don’t like your folding screens,’”
according to Pidgeon. “Actually, he said ‘I don’t like anybody’s folding
screens.’ We invited a group of key staging dealers to come provide
feedback to us. Wayne provided a great deal of feedback at the focus
group and since.” Pidgeon and his team listened.
Wagner’s initiative led to the development by Draper of a totally new
concept in portable screens: Instead of hinged, folding frames Draper
came up with a modular design, where screens are built from an
inventory of pieces of various sizes.
“Talking with the rental dealers I heard several common complaints,”
according to Kenneth Risher, Draper’s Product Design Engineer who
was charged with bringing this new concept in screens to life. Those
complaints included ‘a broken part equals a frame we can't rent,’
‘the current frames just don't last in the rental market,’ ‘when you rent
screens you're lucky if half of the cranks come back—if you lose cranks
or don't have them all when setting up a screen you're dead in the water’
and ‘if we do a really big or custom screen for a show, that frame is only
used once since we’ll probably never do that size again.’ Risher decided
that a “modular" idea would eliminate those complaints—and more.
“I wanted something modular, something that required less labor to
manufacture, something that could be eld-repaired and, of course,
something stronger than what was currently in the marketplace,”
according to Risher. “I wanted it to be completely intuitive to assemble
around the globe, and I wanted to completely eliminate snaps and
tension the surface in a way that had never been done before, providing
variable tension if possible, and something that was eld-repairable.”
Thus were born the StageScreen®, a large venue truss screen, and its
smaller cousin, the single-tube FocalPoint®. Both screens do away with
such perennial folding screen issues as loose hinges, broken and bent
frames, popped snaps, ripped viewing sur faces and pinched ngers.
What they add, according to Wagner, is prot.
“The return on investment is going to be on a fac tor of three
to four times what a standard truss screen would provide,”
according to Wagner. “In the old days, we would buy four 16 x 9 screens
with four front surfaces and four rear surfaces. With that product you
could rent four screens.” The modular design of the StageScreen and
FocalPoint, says Wagner, changes that.
“You can rent all eight of those same sur faces because you are able to
borrow pieces from other screens. So right there you can double your ROI
because you can rent twice as many screens.”
In addition, the introduction of new projection formats has caused a
dilemma in the marketplace. Nowadays, Wagner says for each screen size
a dealer needs to have three formats: 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. Once again, it’s
StageScreen and FocalPoint to the rescue.
“You can reuse the same frame pieces and do all three formats
with basically the same number of frame pieces. The only invest-
ment to add a 16:10 format to your inventory is the sur face [and a few additional pieces].” And that, Wagner points out, is another doubling of ROI.
One of the early witnesses to the development of the StageScreen was
James LeBoeuf, Operations Manager for MassAV in Billerica, Massachusetts, who traveled to Draper’s headquarters in Spiceland, Ind., for a
preview of the StageScreen.
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“It was hard to contain my excitement,” according
to LeBoeuf. “When I came back I said ‘imagine
a screen with no cranks and no snaps-can you
imagine that?’“
Just as Risher predicted, LeBoeuf says the modular
approach of Draper’s StageScreen and FocalPoint solves
all the problems inherent to folding screens.
“People catch their ngers in the latches, they’re not
that durable, they’re prone to breakage, they have
snaps that get crushed, they have cranks that get
lost,” he points out. “StageScreen solves all of those
problems.”
Once he saw it, LeBoeuf was so impressed by the
StageScreen that he was keen to get one out on a job
and into the hands of technicians.
“The rst event I had it on was a large meeting for a
pharmaceutical company. We were erecting a large
truss structure in the glass foyer they had. They wanted
to y a screen, and I immediately jumped on the fact
that I had the StageScreen.” LeBoeuf adds that his
opinion of the StageScreen was quickly rearmed by
the technicians who were onsite.
“There’s no trouble setting this up. I don’t have to
nd cranks. It goes together. It’s rigid. It’s strong. And
that was the exact feedback that I got.”
LeBoeuf says even small items such as the move away
from cranks, snaps and hinges aects the bottom line.
“Just the fact of not having cranks is a huge burden o
of my shoulders,” he says. “I’m sure there are a hundred
techs out there somewhere with piles of cranks sitting
on their dresser that they took out of their pockets after
a show and they never made it back into my frame kit.”
Wagner says he, too, has received a great deal of positive feedback from people in the eld who assemble
the screens, and those who rent them out.
“The comment we get from people is ‘Why are you
still renting truss screens?’ After they’ve had the
StageScreen and FocalPoint, dealers and installers tell
us they don’t want to go back to the old technology.”
In fact, according to Wagner people who have used
the StageScreen and FocalPoint would rather pay a
premium to use them again. “The premium product
sells better because it’s so dramatically better than the
other products.”
“The impact to Draper has been fantastic in terms of
re-introducing the Draper product oering to the AV
rental industry,” according to Draper Rental Products
Manager Jim Hoodlebrink. “People in the industr y see
we are listening to their concerns and they, in turn,
are trying the new products and taking them on for
complete inventory changes.”
Just as Draper listened to Wagner when he approached
the company with his concerns, he in turn is listening
to those who are no longer interested in old-st yle truss
and folding screens. Wagner Media is among those replacing old inventory with modular screens. While this
might be a gamble in today’s tight economy, Wagner
says it is one that has paid o—in spades.
Wagner recently made a major purchase of FocalPoint
screens in 8’, 10’, 12’ and 14’ widths for his oces in
Houston, Orlando and Las Vegas. In each width, the
screen frame can be converted from NTSC format
to 16:9 or 16:10 by exchanging just two frame
sections—a huge savings compared with buying
complete screens for each format. All other frame and
leg components are common to all three formats.
“The thing that we’ve run into, and we’re kind of
shocked at this, is that as we keep adding inventory
there seem to be more orders. Everything we have in
StageScreen is out almost every day. The growth in
that whole market for us is really tremendous.”
And Wagner isn’t the only one who feels that way.
“It’s just really the way to go and I hope it’s the way of
the future,” enthuses LeBoeuf, “so much so that I hope
I can abandon a lot of the other stu and work with the
more modular design that the StageScreen oers.”
Comments like these are just what Draper’s Risher likes
to hear.
“I'm very happy with both designs. For the StageScreen
in particular I left room for and had a variety of possible
iterations in mind, and it’s been fun seeing those iterations come about as the orders and custom requests
come in.
“I'm always happy as a designer to force a paradigm
shift,” adds Risher. “Forward thinking is the only
way forward.”
For more information on the StageScreen or the
FocalPoint, please visit their respective webpages at:
www.draperinc.com/go/StageScreen.htm
www.draperinc.com/go/FocalPoint.htm
Photos shown on front: Draper’s StageScreen®.
Photos shown on this page: Draper’s FocalPoint™.
411 S. Pearl St., Spiceland, IN 47385 USA 765-987-7999
www.draperinc.com fa x 76 5-9 87-1689
Copyright © 2011 Draper, Inc. Form: PortableScreens811 Printed in USA
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