The Christian Exodus Festival took place at Gdańsk’s 15,000-capacity Ergo Arena in February 2018, featuring inspirational effects lighting controlled by an Avolites Sapphire Touch console, supplied by Prolight.
LD Tom Jones created vibrant lighting for the 4-day conference and festival, which featured talks as well as live performances. To achieve his challenging and ambitious design, Jones programmed and controlled the lighting for all events using the Sapphire Touch, powered by Avolites’ effects-focused Titan 10.1 interface.
“Despite some elements of the show being programmed using cue lists, such as the opener and some guest artists, most control was made on the fly as worship is a dynamic environment,” said Jones. “Thankfully, the Sapphire Touch has an intuitive layout, which makes busking extremely fast and simple. Motorised faders and on-screen labelling save a lot of time when needing to jump from page to page.”
Aimed mainly at young people, Exodus prides itself on being a modern and atmospheric experience for attendees. The theme of this year’s Exodus was ‘Forward’, focusing on ‘putting trust in God and his plan for us’. Reflecting this theme, the festival organisers designed the initial lighting and video content before collaborating with Jones to finalise the show design.
“We attempted to translate the theme of the festival as much as possible with the use of video walls surrounded by effects lighting,” said Jones. “There were many challenges, such as the variety of stage performers and the different feels required for a sermon or for live music, for instance. Titan on the Sapphire Touch offers great features for controlling so many different looks. My main saviour was Key Frame Shapes, which made it possible to create radically different looks for each channel in seconds.”
Over the 4 days, Exodus featured lectures, workshops and meetings addressing current topics such as personal development, business and sexuality. A number of artists performed, including Sarsa, Buslav, EXIT Band, Michał Król, Aleksandra Hulecka, Dawid Leszczyński and Michał Rassek.
“This was my second year working as LD for Exodus and in the spirit of such large shows, things did not always go to script or running order!” Jones continued. “Songs are added, changed and extended. This, and the language barrier, made for a very lively show! The Sapphire Touch, loaded with Titan 10.1 is a powerful console and allowed me to mix things up and seamlessly switch between busking and pre-programmed content. I always love working on Avolites desks.
“I’d like to say a massive thank you to the Avolites team who helped to arrange the console at such short notice,” Jones concluded. “They were extremely helpful and handled the pressure with patience and professionalism.”