Chauvet DJ rig flies with Birds of a Feather

USA - Late January typically doesn’t bring the kind of weather associated with music festivals to central Massachusetts, but the bitter New England winter wind notwithstanding, the mood at the multi-stage Birds of a Feather Festival was as care-free as a summer beach party.
Thousands of fans crammed inside the 90-year-old Worcester Palladium for four straight hours of jam and alt rock sounds on Friday, 25 January, and although summer vibes resonated throughout the building, the reality was that being indoors, Birds of a Feather offered no visual variety beyond the stage.
With no mountain views, no surfside background, and no tall trees flanking the stage, eyes seldom wandered from the performance area. For Vin Pugliese, lighting designer for the Main Stage, which featured The Lizards, Jazz is Phish, lespecial and Pink Talking Fish, this meant focusing on creating visual variety throughout the evening. He accomplished this goal with help from a rig anchored by over 40 Chauvet DJ fixtures.
“We had over four hours of music on the Main Stage, so the challenge was to keep the show visually interesting and dynamic from start to finish without being repetitive,” says Pugliese. “One way I did this was to reveal all the different elements of the rig slowly over time without exposing all of my looks too quickly.
“This was possible because I had a wide variety of fixtures in the rig, from hybrids, zoomables, washes and spots, to RGBWAUV pars, battens and blinders. All contributed to the versatility of the show, but big game changer was the Intimidator Hybrid 140SR. It allowed me to do so many different things.”
Pugliese deployed 12 Intimidator Hybrid 140SRs on the Main Stage. Half of these units were flown 15’ high from upstage truss, while the other half were used as an upstage ground package. “The way I positioned the 140SRs gave me a lot of flexibility,” said Pugliese.
Joining the Intimidator Hybrid 140SR fixtures in the rig were 20 Intimidator Wash Zoom 450 IRC fixtures, 16 Intimidator Spot 250 LED units, four Shocker 2 blinders, and eight Freedom Par Hex-4 RGBWA-UV par-style washes. Drawing on the UV lighting of the latter fixtures, Pugliese was able to effect some dramatic changes to the appearance of the stage during the evening.
(Jim Evans)

Latest Issue. . .