Over 10,000 live music fans were able to kick off the 2020 summer festival season in style with the emergence of New Zealand’s Downtown Shakedown. Taking place at Waitangi Park in Wellington – the diverse line-up featured local acts such as Fat Freddy’s Drop, BENEE, L.A.B., Ladi6, Sola Rosa and Sunshine Sound System.
The event was organised by Precision Live, run by Andrew Tuck, the producers behind the country’s major annual music festival, Homegrown. Stage lighting, rigging and site power was supplied by Wellington-based rental company Grouse Lighting with Robe moving lights at the heart of the production design.
The 350 sq m of stage space, including wings, was located inside a huge 40m wide by 90m long marquee. A 14m wide by 10m deep ground support system provided the lighting positions, with an upstage 10m wide by 4m high LED wall in the mix.
Project Manager, Steve Sanders evaluated the riders of Fat Freddy’s Drop with LD Bradley Gledhill and L.A.B’s LD Jack Hooper to get a basis for the lighting rig, which was scaled to fit the marquee and stage environment. Each headliner provided custom floor lighting packages. “We wanted good, reliable, solid and flexible light sources,” Sanders said of his choice of Robe lighting fixtures.
Some 20 Robe LEDWash 600s were utilised for overhead washes and side fill positions – on drop bars – with 24 LEDBeam 100s allocated for various floor packages with some on trusses above the audience. An additional 24 Pointes were used on the rear truss, upstage side drops each side and in selected floor packages. A total of eight Robe ColorStrobes were also added to the rear truss / side bars.
Robe Pointes and the ColorStrobes were specified by guest LDs, notably Ben Dalgleish who was working with BENEE. His lighting control was of choice comprised an MA Lighting grandMA2 console.
Metro Productions built the stage, Western Audio provided the PA and Streamliner Productions delivered LED screens. Precision Live Site and Operations Manager, Michael Lamusse was at the heart of all things technical with Lighting Operator and Crew Chief, Rowan McShane and Lighting Systems Tech, Cam Harley. “We were extremely happy to be part of the event,” concluded Sanders.