Outdoor festival season in the U.S. extends well into the fall with festivals such as Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas – now in its fourth season – emerging as a highlight of the EDM festival calendar. Promotional events company Insomniac again joined forces with Life Is Beautiful and top Lighting Designer Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting to bring the fan-favourite Troubadour Stage alive, which took over Downtown Las Vegas from 23-25 September.
Lieberman, who worked with the three-day music, art, culinary and learning festival for the second year, handled lighting design duties on the high-energy Troubadour Stage, where artists like Bassnectar and ZHU drew huge crowds. Standing 120ft wide and 240ft long, the domed Troubadour Stage took fans on a multi-sensory journey with the latest in lighting and video production hanging from a towering ceiling. Production for the event was handled by AG Light & Sound, who supplied an entertainment technology package that included 66 Elation Colour Chorus 72 LED battens, 36 Platinum Spot 35 Pro moving heads, and 116 Opti Tri 30 compact LED Par lights.
Well familiar with Elation’s Colour Chorus 72 LED battens from having used them on several festivals over the past year, including at last year’s Life is Beautiful festival, Lieberman again incorporated the 6ft long strip lights into his design, lining them on stage and around LED screens, as well as atop LED displays that hugged the audience on either side of the stage. “They are durable and high intensity and fit our needs when detailing and highlighting a truss design, not just colouring it,” stated Steve Lieberman of the Colour Chorus 72 fixture.
Elation’s powerful Platinum Spot 35 Pro, a feature-packed 800W moving head, worked from four long fingers of truss that extended out over the audience, a fixture that Lieberman says has great aerial geometric gobos with very clear definition and looks great up in the air with fog. “They also have clarity of focus and a nice defined edge,” he added.
The designer again turned to Elation’s small Opti Tri 30 Par light to warm and highlight the spectacular truss elements in various shades of colour. Lieberman has found the compact fixture quite useful on many of his larger designs, praising its small profile and great output for its size. “It fits perfectly into 12-inch truss and makes for a clean detail aesthetically,” he said. “ Because it also fits inside the truss if the focus is slightly off they still look good and you also get a nice reflection off of the truss aluminium. It’s also easy to mount, easy to address and one guy can put 12 in a basket.”