An Avolites Tiger Touch II console was used to program and control the high-octane lighting design for the renowned Wild Fruit ‘Summer of Love’ dance tent at the famous annual LGBTQ equality and diversity festival, Brighton Pride.
The Summer of Love tent hosted headline act DJ David Morales and featured sets from Jocelyn Brown, Angie Brown, Rozalla and Prok & Fitch. Providing the venue with a series of intense lighting looks was Lighting Designer Paul de Villiers who worked closely with Dean Parker of Wilde Ones Event Services who supplied and managed the event.
“We have worked with Dean and Wilde Ones on Brighton Pride for the past two years,” said De Villiers. “The concept this year for the Wild Fruit tent was to ‘go wide’. In the past, the tent’s performance area was end-on, but this year we went broader and located the stage side-on.”
To create the wild fruit dance look, De Villiers used self-climbing truss goalposts toward the back of the stage framing a 12m by 4m, 6mm LED wall, supplied by Video Illusions, that displayed outlandish club visuals complete with custom logos and Pride sponsor footage dropped in over the top.
“We ran LED across the front of the DJ riser, creating a frame for the booth using lighting and truss,” added De Villiers. “We then ran more LED screen down the two framing truss towers and had moving head beams and lasers on four truss uprights, two either side of the stage.”
The laser systems were provided by Paul Teare from Shive-AV, comprising 2 Laserworld Purelight PL-10.000 with retro fit extra diodes at 2W, 2 Lightspace 5W Unicorn retrofitted with CT620 scanners for wider scan angle and 2 Kvant Clubmax 6000 laser systems.
To supply the Wild Fruit tent De Villiers worked with long-term acquaintance, Wingnut, of rental and production outfit WingnuT Production Lighting Ltd, who supplied the majority of the lighting elements with some extra fixtures and rigging coming from Panalux Broadcast and Event who supplied the Main Stage.
“For Wild Fruit we ran the Tiger Touch II using Avolites’ latest Titan 10.1 software,” explained Wingnut. “The majority of the show was controlled live, so we used Titan’s advanced features such as tap tempo on chase memories and size and speed masters in order to create quick, high-impact lighting effects.
“The Tiger Touch II desk is very intuitive when it comes to programming and operating. Not only in regards to the software, but the hardware of the console are adaptable and easy to expand with Titan Mobile Wing.”
Speaking of the support from Avolites at the Pride event, De Villiers says, “We have had amazing support from the Avolites team and cannot fault their unfailing encouragement. They produce great desks and Titan just keeps getting better and better with every release, thanks guys!”
Brighton Pride took place from 4-6 of August 2017. The UK’s largest Pride festival, it is described by the Guardian as ‘the country’s most popular LGBT event’. The festival took place across the city of Brighton with the main site in Brighton’s Preston Park.