Leading UK lighting and visuals rental company Colour Sound Experiment recently celebrated 10 years of being a main technical supplier to Field Day – one of London’s premier and most popular urban music events, staged in Victoria Park, Hackney.
“We are all extremely proud of that achievement,” commented Colour Sound’s MD Haydn Cruickshank. “In that time we have seen the event develop and diversify, all the time retaining its unique approach to music programming and its emphasis on delivering the highest production values to its audiences.”
Working for LarMac LIVE, contracted by producers Loudsound Events to coordinate all the technical elements of the event, Colour Sound Experiment supplied lighting to the nine largest performance areas, and LED screens to five of these performance spaces. Around 140 moving lights plus generics, control and all the LED screens filled three artics at its northwest London warehouse.
Colour Sound’s Project Manager, Fletch, worked alongside 17 crew, including Crew Chief Sam Campbell.
The Main Stage – a large orbit-style roof system supplied by Acorn Event Structures – featured a production lighting design from Colour Sound that accommodated the specs of the two headlining acts, PJ Harvey (LD Johnny Barker) and James Blake (LD Chris Bushell). This entailed a full overnight de-rig/re-rig on the Saturday night.
Colour Sound is also supplying the James Blake touring floor/visuals package for all his festival dates through the summer.
Lighting trusses were sub-hung on the main stage below the roof superstructure, and the flown front truss sections were curved to the contours of the roof to maximise the height. Upstage, a 10 metre wide by six metre tall LED screen was installed made up from Colour Sound’s proprietary BT-7 LED screen product.
The moving lights on this stage were a mix of 18 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500’s, chosen for its power and punch, eight Sharpys and 16 a.leda K20s fitted with B-EYE lenses, dotted all over the trusses for the best and most dynamic coverage, and this combination of lights offered up plenty of options. They were joined by eight Martin by Harman Atomic strobes and eight 8-lite Moles.
The house control desk was a ChamSys MQ300 and the FOH was helmed by Chris Steel and Toby Lovegrove. James Blake used his own touring video screen, flown just in front of the house one, and this was overseen by Zac Blayton for Colour Sound.
The second stage was inside a large marquee approximately 45 metres by 60 metres with a large capacity of several thousand. Colour Sound installed a 10 by 11 metre ground support system around the stage, with another truss above the audience rigged on the tent king poles.
Lighting was designed to be as flexible as possible to deal with the dynamic line-up of DJs and live acts, which included legendary French electronica duo Air headlining on the Sunday.
The moving lights here were 14 GLP impression Spot 1’s, 10 Robe LEDWash 300’s and 18 ProLights Diamond 7 LED beam fixtures, and they were supported by six SGM XC-5 strobes, 13 Showtec Sunstrips, six 8-lite moles and eight 2-lites. The video was a six-metre wide by four-metre tall surface of BT-7 upstage.
Lighting was run via a ChamSys MQ60 by Will Thomas. Dave Cattermole tech’d the video and Stu Bar and Frank Williams were the General Lighting Technicians.
“Field Day is one of my favourite festivals of the season,” said Fletch, “It is fun to work on, a great team of people all work very hard to deliver the very best production elements to a great audience, and there is a nice synergy and spirit.”