When Avenged Sevenfold stepped onto the stage for their headline performance at Download Festival 2024, my brief was slightly different from the typical festival assignment. I had been commissioned by PRG UK, the company responsible for supplying the band’s full production package, to document not just the performance itself but the scale, engineering, and technical sophistication of the show.

The stage design immediately stood out for its unconventional geometry. Instead of a traditional flat LED backdrop, the production used a series of large suspended LED cubes and modular screens arranged at varying heights above the stage. meant looking beyond the musicians and focusing on the entire stage ecosystem — the architecture of the rig, the lighting design, the video system, and how all of those elements interacted with the band and the crowd.

From my perspective behind the camera, the most impressive aspect of the performance wasn’t any single element but how all the technical components worked together. The LED architecture, lighting programming, stage layout, and performance were clearly designed as a cohesive production environment, where visuals, sound, and movement all reinforced one another. Documenting it for PRG UK meant treating the concert not just as a performance but as a piece of large-scale stage engineering — a show where the technology itself became part of the spectacle. When viewed through the lens from across the arena, the result was striking: a massive, glowing structure of light and screens hovering above the band, with thousands of fans beneath it, all pulled into the same immersive visual world.