Organisers of the Hope Fellowship Church’s Hillfest Christian music festival added a thrust to their main stage. This configuration brought their star-studded lineup of artists closer to the audience, but it also necessitated some modifications in front lighting.
“With the stage having a thrust, we needed to position fixtures to light performers farther out, away from the stage than our downstage truss would allow,” explained project manager, Martin Lyons. “We used the Maverick Storm 1 Washes placed up on the hill by FOH to wash the thrust. Their zoom range allowed us to have a great wash from a far distance.”
The Maverick Storm 1 Wash were among the 30 CHAUVET Professional fixtures, along with F4IP video panels, in the festival rig, which was supplied and installed by Events United.
Rachel Fahey, the festival’s production designer, elaborated on the plan to balance front lighting, “Our team did position a few fixtures far upstage,” she said. “This was both for functionality, and to diversify the design. With festival stages such as this one, how a design functions, is just as important as how it looks. With several different sets happening on, and off, stage it was important to have a design that worked for all of them. Thanks to the brightness of our fixtures, we weren’t concerned with the throw distance affecting the design negatively.”
Adding an extra level of variety to the design were the rig’s eight Color STRIKE M motorised strobe-blinder-effects fixtures. Spread throughout the rig, the fixtures helped the design team control the mood between intimate silhouetted passages and bright high impact strobing moments. Working the Color STRIKE Ms with the rig’s eight Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures allowed the designers to conjure up blends of lighting from multiple angles.
“Side and backlighting are almost as important and face lighting to intensify the energy that the artist is bringing to the stage,” said Fahey. “Pairing the bright strobe and pixel mapping ability of the Chauvet Strike Ms with the breakups of the Chauvet MK2 Spots gave our lighting engineer Ryan Lane a variety of tools to shape the mood on stage, which is something he excels at.”
Audience lighting from the rig’s STRIKE 4 fixtures was another key element of the festival’s immersive design. “With the audience being spread across the hillside at this site, it was important to be able to have a strong audience light so the bands could see and interact with the crowd,” said Lyons, who noted that combining the effect of the STRIKE fixtures with the colour of the Color STRIKE M resulted in more interesting looks for the crowd.
