Ottawa Special Events (OSE) provided a substantial package of Elation Professional lighting fixtures for Glowfair 2018, some drawn from their own inventory and others rented from Christie Lights.
In all, nearly 100 Elation fixtures were deployed, a combination of Elation Professional Platinum HFX hybrid moving heads, Elation Professional ZW19 LED moving head beam/wash effects, compact Elation Professional ACL 360i™ beam effects and Elation Professional SixPar 200™ LED Par lights.
Not surprisingly, Glowfair requires a lot of infrastructure, much of it supplied by OSE. Beyond lights, the company also provides logistics support, audio, video, staging, tents, tables, chairs and more, said Production Manager, Joel DesLauriers, who specified and designed the Elation-heavy lighting package for Glowfair 2018.
“We have more time for the main stage, but only one day, from noon to 6 PM, to set up the DJ stage, a ton of ‘glow’ areas and lighting along the whole street. It’s a big challenge logistically,” he explained. The work starts well before the festival, however. “The organizers trust our production choices and give us creative freedom, so the design is up to our discretion and we always do intricate designs – not just a generic festival package,” said DesLauriers. “Once we find out who’s playing we program multiple tempos, bumps and presets, with strobes, flashes and movement, so the rig looks like it’s designed for each band.”
In total, OSE specified 8 Elation Professional Platinum HFXs, 12 Elation Professional ZW19s, 24 Elation Professional ACL 360is and 60 Elation Professional SixPar 200s. ADJ Focus Spot Three Zs were also supplied for Glowfair’s DJ stage, as well as ADJ UV Cob Cannons and Ultra Hex Bar UV fixtures for deployment around the site.
OSE purchased the Elation Professional Platinum HFXs from SF Marketing in November 2017, the exclusive Canadian distributor for Elation Professional products in Canada. “We were constantly renting profile and beam fixtures for events that, typically, only need a few fixtures. So I thought if we bought the HFX we wouldn’t have to run around trying to find them,” DesLauriers commented, citing the HFX’s wide-ranging feature set as a driver for the purchase.
4 Elation Professional Platinum HFX units were placed on each of the central main stage trusses and used for a variety of looks, including all spotlighting. “They were our only spots on the rig because a lot of the bands have electronic features, so there are a lot of beams, strobes and flashes and we didn’t need a ton of spots,” DesLauriers commented.
The remainder of the rig was rented from Christie Lights. The Elation Professional ZW19s were spaced evenly (6 per truss) on the upstage and downstage pipes. DesLauriers continued: “They were a lot brighter than we thought. We’d never used them before. I could have used something else, but I was trying to stay all Elation because Elation is our go-to and I’ve always been a fan of them for price point and reliability. And the Z19s worked out great. We could wash the whole back of the stage, add colour saturation and they were fast, too. Using the HFX and Z19s in beam mode and all the ACL360is, we could get very tight, symmetrical beam patterns.”
16 Elation Professional SixPar 200s were deployed on the DJ stage, and the rest placed throughout the site to provide UV light for ‘Glow Fit’, ‘Glow Yoga’ and other events. “They’re not a native UV fixture but they do provide UV light and with 144 Watts behind them it was bright enough to light up the whole block. They’re one of the brightest LED Pars I’ve ever used and, because of their form factor, they don’t take up much room. The 25-degree beam provides a nice, tight beam angle, and when you flash or dim them, the pattern of the LEDs provides a cool look. For eye candy, especially in smaller clubs where the room is tight, if you turn Pars up too much you’re going to give everyone a seizure. Being able to bump them at 10 to 20 percent is great. You just can’t do that effectively with a traditional par” concluded DesLauriers.
The Glowfair Festival’s mission, beyond throwing a huge party, is to develop and empower the local community through music and the arts, provide opportunities for underserved youth and support inclusion and diversity.