Festivals

Glastonbury Festival 

Glastonbury’s Acoustic tent is a favourite for many, offering a chance to warm up to the day’s ear-splitting events or chill down - depending on your preference. This year it hosted an impressive line up with Damien Rice, Sandy Thorn and The Waterboys to name but a few. Gary Churchill acted as LD and Board operator for this tent, while Fineline’s Rob Sangwell was production manager.

“Although it is the Acoustic Tent, it is not strictly acoustic and the brief is far from a laidback acoustic gig,” said Sangwell. “It’s chilled out in the afternoon but as the evening progresses it gets more full-on and a bit rockier. Essentially what we wanted to do was light the stage in a way which was appropriate to each act and keep it interesting and fresh.”
But with 12 acts a day, 12 hours a day, and all the unique challenges of Glastonbury, this was perhaps easier said than done for the pair. Especially since Sangwell was responsible not only for the Acoustic Tent but for six other stage areas as well.

“Glastonbury is a harsh environment, and not just in terms of the weather,” he explained. “We never know before hand just what we are going to get band-wise. It’s only two weeks before we go live that we get a list of who will be playing, so the rig has to be highly adaptable. You’re lighting for anything from a solo guitar to a full-on 14-piece band. You need a versatile rig to cover all possibilities.”

Sangwell is a hardened veteran to the whims of British weather, and after many years in the business there is little a music festival can throw at him that he can’t handle. In the rain and the mud at this year’s Glastonbury, it took 14 hours just to get the truck up to the stage area before the unloading could begin. With these sorts of timeframes, the actual set-up had to be fast and simple to avoid going over the tight budgets.

“We like Martin lights because they are easy to hang and reliable,” said Sangwell. “Everything stood up really well. The lights are running for a minimum of 14-16 hours a day but they were all fine.”

This year he had the chance to use a few new comers from Martin, including the LED hit, the Stagebar 54 and the MAC TW1 tungsten wash.

“The Stagebars were great - very bright yet small and lightweight. We used 24 of them and it gave a great effect. We could address them as individual pixels or just a blanket covering. They really are a great all-in-one unit. You can use them with video or as a little colour changer that is neat and tidy enough to fit into small gaps. Their price is attractive so you can afford to go and pick up enough of them and scatter them around to make it look interesting.

“We controlled them through the Maxedia media server. This was the first time we used a media server so we were interested to see how it would work in the rough conditions of Glastonbury. It is all very well if it can work in a studio environment but we wanted to see it in the mud - and Maxedia was really good. It was definitely hardy enough and easy to use, we didn’t have any problems at all.”

He also took the MAC TW1 for a maiden voyage. “We got a chance to try the MAC TW1’s for the first time and they were much brighter than I thought they would be. They really did a good job.

“We like the Martin lights, but it is also the back up we get that makes us go to Martin. The support is second-to-none and that is so important. Nobody gives you the support like Martin - the people really give a damn and that is just as important to us as the quality of the products. Advice, backup, spares – we can get them all quickly and efficiently.”  www.martin.com

CMA Nashville 

When fans of country music got together at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville (formerly known as Fan Fair), grandMA was centre stage. Lighting/production designer Mike Swinford used five grandMA consoles and three grandMA video servers to cover the concert portion of the four-day celebration. The annual CMA (Country Music Association) Music Festival regularly attracts more than 161,000 fans from around the world. Legendary performers, up-and-coming stars and country music fans take part in the concerts, which produce over 70 hours of live music.

“The show is the centrepiece of a huge music festival that draws fans from all over the world,” said lighting director and programmer Mark Butts.  “When ABC started to broadcast it a few years ago it really upped the ante in terms of design and production. For us, the show is an interesting hybrid of on-the-fly, festival-style lighting and tightly-cued, precise television lighting. It’s difficult trying to work in both worlds simultaneously, but it sure keeps things interesting.”

Butts said that even though the show is a network special there was very little camera rehearsal. “We look at everything for about an hour the night before the first show. This means that the first time we see a song, we’re taping. This year they only recorded the songs marked for potential broadcast so I went to our previz studio in the morning and programmed all of the songs for that evening’s show. Even with that much work done beforehand, there were a lot of last-minute tweaks for camera, so we needed gear that was flexible, responded quickly and was reliable in this type of environment. That’s why we spec grandMA products on our jobs.”

Two separate control systems were configured plus the system in the previz studio. Butts used five full-size grandMA consoles, five NSPs, two full grandMA video servers, an RFU, and an offline server at the studio.  Among the lighting fixtures controlled by the grandMAs were 66 Martin Mac 600s, 42 Martin Mac 2000 washes, 38 Vari*Lite VL3000 spots, 14 Vari*Lite VL2500 spots, and eight Martin Mac 2000 Professionals.

Butts said he liked being able to see thumbnails in the grandMA’s smart window. “It makes programming faster and makes running media on the fly a breeze. I set up an X/Y fader for layers one and two and used it as a t-bar, loading media via the thumbnail buttons on the fly. The cross communication between the desk and the servers was a big selling point for me, especially on a show like this. Last year we ran the entire show from one data pipe and divided the system up using worlds. This allowed Ken Hudson, the other programmer, to pull back and key lights out of the system as needed and leave the rest to me to flash and trash. This year, we made extensive use of inhibitive submasters, speed groups and timing faders to make the on-the-fly portion of the show easier. These features and make running shows of this type so much easier.”

Butts has been using the grandMA since the console made its debut.  “I like the scalability and flexibility of these products,” he said. “This desk has years of development behind it which make it rock solid. But this would mean nothing if the technical support wasn’t there.  One of the reasons I feel so confident using these products and trying new things with them is that I know I’ll be supported. The MA Lighting team in Germany, and the A.C.T. Lighting team in the US, provide me with unrivalled technical support.”

Bob Gordon President and CEO of A.C.T. Lighting (the exclusive distributor of the grandMA in North America) said lighting designers used the grandMA to their advantage. “Both Mike Swinford and Mark Butts are real pros with a long list of great credits,” he said. “For them to depend on both the grandMA and the grandMA video system is a real honour.”
www.malighting.com

Live Earth 

Live Earth united seven continents with concerts in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Hamburg, to raise awareness of climate change. It was broadcast globally, reaching over two billion people. The 24-hour event began in Sydney, Australia and concluded with the US show at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

Patrick Woodroffe was the global designer for the project, creating a formal plot that would be developed into the flagship London rig. As it was impossible for him to be present at all the events, he appointed a team of lighting designers – one in each hosting country - to re-create individual designs based on the availability of fixtures in the various locations.

The design of energy efficient lighting rigs was of great importance to Woodroffe, He wanted visually stunning yet low energy lighting fixtures, and turned to PRG Europe for a solution. The event was sponsored by Philips, so he planned to use household fluorescent lighting above the stage, but fluorescent lamps don’t work well when turned on and off a lot, and they don’t usually run off DMX, which created a communications challenge. Philip Norfolk, PRG Distribution commercial director decided to put a Pathway control system between the Wholehog II and the lamps to convert the desk’s DMX output into control information the lamps’ ballasts would understand.

“Patrick created six ‘Ecoclusters’,” explained Norfolk. “He took 24 A-rated for efficiency lamps and hung them from the inside of half an oil drum, which was then covered with a translucent black gauze and suspended above the stage. We fixed the ballasts inside the drums then wired the bulbs, via the Pathway, to the control desk.”

Woodroffe also chose to showcase hundreds of PixelRange LED luminaires on stages all over the globe. For the NY show, each product was carefully chosen by performing side by side comparisons and research on power draws versus light output versus entertainment value. The final specification included High End’s Showgun and Coemars’ Infinity wash for the moving lights and an LED battery of 64 PixelLine 1044s. 11 PixelPar 90s were also used to complete the organic rock columns that hung from the rig, which incorporated the clusters of dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs.

Programmers Mike Appel and Kevin Lawson devoted their time to creating entertaining effects and chases on the 1044s. New York’s lighting designer Patrick Dierson said: “The PixelLines had the punch to help light up the stadium and enough isolated control to let us really make them dance without having to tie them into our video system.”

PixelRange also featured heavily on the London stage, the specification boasted 123 PixelLine Micro washes, 54 PixelLine 1044s and 37 PixelPar 90s. All the lighting was supplied by PRG.

XL Video supplied one of their new HD PPUs, cameras, screens and 30 crew to the Live Earth London, staged at Wembley Stadium. Screen producer Chris Saunders co-ordinated all the video elements between XL and the various event designers, producers and others involved in screen content. Flanking both sides of Stageco’s stage were two IMAG screens made up from 9 x 7 modules of Lighthouse R16 LED. Onstage, across the centre at the back, XL supplied a 74 panel wide by four panel high strip of Barco I-12 LED.

Twenty-four of i-Pix’s new mega-bright BB wash-lights were in action for the London show, mounted on the front truss header and used instead of normal eight light blinders. Using the BBs enabled in the blinder role a six fold reduction in power, the units consumed a total of just 76.8 Amps on full power, with each unit pulling just over 1 Amp per colour over its 16 cells (had 24 conventional blinders been used, they would have drawn 497.8 amps). Apart from their incredible brightness, the BB’s offer precise millisecond colour changing, which replaces the need for colour scrollers and their associated maintenance.

Seventy Outline Butterfly Hi-packs helped provide the sound for the London show, along with 20 Subtech 218s. The system was powered by Outline T Series amplifiers.

Hamburg’s HSH-Nordbank Arena provided the venue for the German Live Earth event. The organizers enlisted the services of Satis&Fy to handle the sound reinforcement. In addition to local hero Jan Delay, the Hamburg stage was graced by Shakira, Snoop Dogg, Enrique Iglesias, Katie Melua and Yusuf Islam. The FOH and monitor positions were occupied by a total of four Midas Heritage 3000 and two Heritage 2000 consoles, while Electro-Voice line arrays (X-Line and XLC) powered by Tour Grade TG-7 amps with RCM-26 Remote Control Modules projected the sound to the furthest reaches of the audience. The nerve centre handling the signal distribution for routing, matrix, delays and master EQs was an EV N8000 NetMax.

www.liveearth.org

Aste Nagusia Bilbao 

An Avolites Diamond 4 console controlled all main stage lighting for the nine-day Aste Nagusia 2007 Festival in Bilbao, Spain, which saw 15,000 people a night enjoy an eclectic line up of bands.

Bilbao-based Audiomic supplied technical production for the event. The Diamond 4 was specified by lighting crew chief Urko Arruza, and programmed and operated by Alex Ampudia.

Before the festival, Ampudia used the D4 for a month long production of two operas in Santander, which gave him the opportunity to explore its features before using it in Bilbao.
This year, promoters Serrano, in conjunction with Bilbao City Council, decided to increase main stage production values and offer a more comprehensive technical package. It was the first year that Audiomic won the contract to supply the equipment, and their brief was to increase the visual impact of the gig. The lighting rig was designed to cater for 13 different bands all from different musical genres and with different lighting requirements.

Arruza’s design used seven trusses, all from Milos. Three over-stage trusses featured curved ends, and three straight ones were hung at different trim heights at the back to add dynamics to the upstage lighting positions, plus a conventional front truss.

The moving lights were 22 Vari*Light 3000 Spots and 12 80 Volt V*L 500 Wash fixtures, positioned on each of the three curved trusses and on the floor.

Fourteen JTE PixelLine 1044s and twelve 2-lites were also rigged to the curved trusses at varying heights, along with two Martin Atomic strobes, plus another two Atomics on the floor. Also on the floor at the front were four Clay Paky CPColor400 colour-changing effects to provide some low-level side lighting.

The front truss featured six bars of six for the front wash and 12 Lekos for specials and key lighting, along with four 8-Lites for audience illumination and four 4-lites per side on either of the PA wings, also pointing into the audience. The Diamond 4 controlled all of this. Avolites ART 2000 took care of the dimming, and power was distributed by one of Audiomic’s new PDs, supplied by EES who are also Avolites’ Spanish distributor. Audiomic supplied two Robert Juliat Corrigan 1200W follow spots as well.

Ampudia operated lighting for half of the headline acts, while others brought their own LDs, who he ‘babysat’. He created a set of basic ‘building block’ palettes on the D4, and then layered each band’s individual shows on top of those, saving the different shows to the D4’s hard drive to be recalled as their slots came up. “It’s a very efficient desk to programme and work on,” he said.

Arruza and Ampudia were joined on the lighting crew by Koldo Belloso (dimmers) and Jon Loiola (lighting tech). Another four Audiomic crew looked after the EAW KF760 sound system. The FOH engineer was Ignacio Gutierrez, who worked with Jimmy Martin on monitors, joined by stage assistants Endika Lopez and Lon Fernandez.
www.avolites.com

Rockness

Scottish festival Rock Ness saw 35,000 people party over two days against the backdrop the famous Loch Ness. The monster line-up included the Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada and Daft Punk.

HSL supplied full lighting production, rigging and crew for the X-FM Main Stage and The Clash Arena. Mike Oates, HSL’s overall project manager said: “The first thing we did was get two world class lighting designers onboard  – Andy Liddle on the Main stage and Dave Byars in the Clash Arena.”

The main stage was a low profile 12m Orbit – chosen for its minimal impact on the natural beauty of the environment. Lighting was rigged around the roof shape to maximize available headroom. Robe was the moving light of choice with 36 fixtures in total, a mixture of Robe ColorSpot 1200 ATs and ColorWash 700 ATs.

There were 28 JTE PixelLines and 12 Martin Professional Atomic Strobes with colour scrollers, eight eight-cell blinders and 12 i-Pix Satellites. They had four of the new mega-bright i-Pix BB Wash LED fixtures on this stage as well. Conventionals came in the form of assorted bars of four PARs and ACLs, plus some ARRI 1K baby fresnels for front key lighting. Liddle ran the show off a WholeHog II console and a Wing. Two Avolites 72-way racks provided dimming, and power distribution was via a HSL’s custom soca distros.

The first task HSL undertook in the spacious tented Clash Arena was the construction of a 10m x 15m Litec ground support system with 8m of headroom. The tent needed to be large enough to accommodate Daft Punk’s famous pyramid set. The lighting rig in here was 52 Martin MAC 2K profiles and 24 MAC 2K washes, along with 12 Atomic strobes and 10 PixelLine 10544s and an assortment of two and four-cell binders.

There was an ART 48-way dimmer and the production rig was run off two Avolites Diamond 4 consoles which were linked for simultaneous programming. The D4’s triggered two RADlite NG4 digital media servers that were running PixelDrive for Groove Armada’s Saturday night headline slot (LD Alan King). Daft Punk (LD Martin Phillips) brought their own Hog iPC console.

An L-Acoustics VDOSC system supplied main stage sound with Midas consoles at both ends of the multicore. The Clash Arena featured a Funktion-One Res 5 system with Midas XL4 consoles.
www.hslgroup.com

Sonar Del Dia

The Sonar del Dia electronic music and multimedia arts festival took over Barcelona’s old town from the 14th to the 16th June 2007. The MACBA (Museau d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) hosted the three-day event. Over 80,000 people attended the festival, which had four stages. The open air Village was the largest stage, dominated by trip hop and funk, which 12 Adamson Y18’s and six Adamson T21’s pumped out to the audience. Two of the T21s were turned off because the low end was sufficient with just two a side when paired with the Y18’s. Four SX 18 side fills, three M15 monitors and two CB1’s were used as an FOH system, where Sound Engineer Joan Román mixed bands on a Midas Heritage 3000.

The indoor Hall stage featured big screens displaying multimedia art combined by an Adamson SpekTrix system. Two hangs of seven SpekTrix with a single Wave enclosure hung left and right of the stage, and four SpekTrix subs were stacked on the ground. Two SX 18’s were used on the stage as side fills and a Heritage 2000 desk sat at FOH. The outdoor Dome stage had a mellow feel with a ground level stage inside a tent. Adamson 12 Y10’s with a lighter fare of six Y10 subs provided the sound here with SX18’s as stage fills.

The Complex stage was a large underground venue that offered mostly beat heavy club fare. A five SpekTrix box rig with a three SpekTrix Wave under hang paired with eight SpekTrix subs covered the venue smoothly. All Adamson speakers were run on European standard racks consisting of Lab.gruppen power, XTA processing (an M-Series processor was used for the M15’s), Adamson’s own A.I.D. panels and power distros. Artur Alvarez of Croma 440, and Systems Engineer, Joan Fornes oversaw the event.

www.adamsonproaudio.com
 

Juwenalia Slaskie 

Over 10,000 people attended the recent Juwenalia Slaskie 2007 Festival in Katowice, Poland. The numbers were far more than was originally expected, but proved no problems to the production team, CMA (a major rental company) who worked closely with Arcade Audio, RCF’s distributor in Poland. “The solution was simple,” said Renata Klimek, managing director of Arcade Audio, “We used the new TT line array which easily coped with the conditions at the Katowice’s sport airport.” Headlining on the day were Hev and Dzem, two of the Poland’s most popular bands.

The sound system installed for the concert consisted of eight TTL33-A for each side of the stage, and a series of TTS28-A subwoofers. Renata Klimek continued: “The TT system supplied a powerful and clean sound to all of the large audience at the concert. 7,000 people were expected but in the end more than 10,000 young students gathered for the show.  All the staff, from CMA’s technicians to the band’s sound engineers were really impressed and satisfied with the sound of the TT High Definition Touring And Theatre Line Array. We’d like to thank RCF’s direct support and Mr. Emanuele Morlini (TT Product Manager) for his valuable work on the spot with us.”
www.rcfaudio.com

Rock Im Park 

Rental company Pave used HK Audio at Rock im Park in Nuremberg, Germany. The Alterna Stage at Rock im Park, which together with associated event Rock am Ring is the biggest German rock and pop festival with 100,000 visitors, had sound courtesy of a HK Audio COHEDRA. The Alterna Stage is the second biggest stage at the Rock im Park festival. It is open air and has a capacity of 25,000. This year The White Stripes, Machine Head, Type O Negative and Jan Delay played on the Alterna Stage.

To support these different acts the stage needed a multilateral sound system. Wolfgang Geisler, CEO of Pave, said: “The COHEDRA has optimally covered all the demands on the sound system. The feedback we’ve had from the many diverse FOH engineers was great. There was praise for its resistance, the high coverage and the high fidelity at high acoustic pressures. We used the system at a top acoustic pressure level of about 108 dB/A at the FOH stand, which was sufficient for all requirements.”
www.hkaudio.com