After Hours featured live performances by Basement Jaxx and Madness, and the show closed to a rousing set by DJ Norman Jay. Matt Phillips came onboard to oversee the complete production management needed to support the event along with Grant Mitchell looking after the finer technical detail in the main tent. They asked Blinding Light to supply the lighting for stage, dancefloor, food hall and all other areas of the site including architectural illumination of the house and all back stage areas.
Blinding Light supplied an eight-leg self-climbing ground support system that went over the 40 x 30 metre main stage and continued the full length of the tent, and this was used to rig all elements of production equipment including lighting, sound and video. The overall lighting design was by Blinding Light's Paddy Stacey - the equipment supplied took up two full artic's - and covered four areas- the performance stage and dancefloor, the food hall and exterior lighting and the general site lighting including walkways and other public areas.
"I decided to go back to basics for the main tent lighting," says Stacey, who used a heavy base of Par cans to ensure the vast area was well covered with wash lighting. This included two rows of six-lamp bars running down each side of the tent, that were precisely and symmetrically focussed to create an interesting perspective 'look' when viewed from either end of the tent. He used Pars around the stage for a generic colour wash. The next layer of lighting on top of this was the moving lights - a mix of Martin Mac 500s and 300s, High End Studio Spot 250s and Clay Paky Mini Scan HPEs - more than 70 units in total to cover the stage and dancefloor areas - plus assorted specials like 8-lites.
On the night, stage and dancefloor lighting was operated by Russell Grubiak using a Wholehog II and Wing, and Basement Jaxx' LD Leggy came in to operate their show as well as Madness. For the exterior lighting, Blinding Light supplied four City Colors and 18 Mini-city 150s (all from Studio Due) to illuminate the main façade of the house. The trees, walkways and other areas were lit with twenty 400W MBI floods, 10 exterior Par cans and twenty 500W floods, and there was also a miscellany of other feature lighting fixtures dotted around, including flaming torches, gas Flambeaux and Par 30s.
Blinding Light's crew chief was Hugo Beaver, who worked with two riggers and five LX crew. The in started on Wednesday for a Saturday show, and the out started immediately after the party ended, leaving the site clear of lighting and truss by 5pm on Sunday. The biggest lighting challenge was in covering the massive area, keeping it in budget and dealing with the limited hanging facilities inside the structure plus the weight loadings on the wooden floor - which was on top of a grass bank.
Sound and video was supplied by Blitz - one of Microsoft's approved suppliers. The main tent sound was a d&b Q1 line array system, overseen by Blitz's Pete Russell. Video featured two flown Barco G8s doubled up to produce a single image beamed onto a 20 x 11 ft screen behind the band. They supplied a 3 camera PPU including a small jib, a camera in the pit and a hand-held onstage for IMAG to screen, and a five-minute record was taken of each band. Live video director was Patrick Redman. Power was supplied by Powerline, including two 400kVA
