Lighting Designer Daniel Reistenhofer from D-TWO Stage&Light Creations was tasked with bringing the Men’s World Cup Night Slalom, a party held in Schladming, Austria to light in 2017, with a season opening event.
To help make the biggest impact possible with his lighting scheme Reistenhofer enlisted the help of over 100 Robe moving lights; made up of 74 Robe Pointes and 34 Robe BMFL WashBeams. Reistenhofer was asked to light the ski opening after the organisers, Leutgeb Entertainment Group and the Planai Hochwurzen Bahnen Gesellschafft, saw some of his other stage designs. The format was similar to a large EDM event, a large stage – 40m x 24m – was set up next to the Planai ski slope and around 16’000 people packed in to enjoy the start of December opening event and international line-up that included Martin Garrix, Alle Farben and Alan Walker.
Reistenhofer was asked to design set, video and lighting, so he proposed a design based on 4 hills representing the contours of the Planai mountain cableway. Lighting wise, he wanted to give as much scope and flexibility as possible to the guest LDs arriving with each of the headlining DJs, so with limited programming time, they had the chance to make up great looking scenes quickly and easily.
The Robe Pointes and BMFLs were rigged on 6 tall towers upstage and a steel structure used for rigging the LED video screens and the set. This was designed to be open with a low see-through arched roof immediately above the DJ booth to provide some protection for the artists in case of snowfall. The Robe Pointes were the main stage-lighting workhorse fixtures and were positioned all over the structure, from where they could light the stage, the DJs and fire out into the crowds.
The BMFL WashBeams were onstage and rigged to the FOH towers. Two at FOH and 4 onstage were used to light the décor and the hills. Reistenhofer made the most of the shutter systems to clearly define and highlight these set pieces. Another 4 at FOH were utilised to light the front line of the stage; 8 upstage provided powerful piercing beams from the back, with the remaining 14 dotted over the stage deck for additional show and cross lighting. “I think we used every function of the Pointe in spot and beam mode because you can generate so many different looks and possibilities and this little fixture has so much output,” Reistenhofer commented.
The Robe BMFLs were used for serious gobo projections. With the WashBeams at FOH, the framing combined with the gobo projection and animation capabilities could highlight and texture the whole stage. They could light from low down at the back with the smallest beams and create a range of powerful multi-beam looks that contrasted with those being created above by the Pointes.
The video elements of the show was designed by Reistenhofer and operated by a VJ hired for the event, with the intensity and colour of the video playback also controlled by Reistenhofer and second operator Thomas Stranzl on their High End Systems’ Hog4 and Full Boar 4 control consoles. This way they could match the lighting and video more closely and produce fully harmonious looks. In addition to these consoles and a Road Hog 4, an MA Lighting grandMA was provided for guest LDs. The finale and ‘closing show’ of the evening was run via timecode triggered by the lighting consoles.
Lighting equipment was supplied by Getec-Eventechnik. The production manager was Strohmayer Andreas and the lighting crew chiefs were Karl Sorger and Michael Kink. Technical Production was co-ordinated by Daniel Zötsch and SFX were supplied by FOG fireworks plus SFX GmbH and run by Sascha Tietze.