Chauvet lights Halloween monsters and music
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Combining a bag full of musical treats from a diverse array of acts that includes a mix of big-name stars like Bassnectar and rising artists, with some tricky scenic elements that scare the senses, the three-day festival has become a Halloween ritual for a growing number of fans. Enhancing their experience throughout the grounds as well as at two of its stages this year were over 200 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied and installed by The Design Oasis.
Abbas Ritscher and his team at The Design Oasis, which included John Hollingshead and Joe Donnelly, positioned 150 COLORado 1-Tri IP fixtures around the lake that served as the “festival centrepiece”. They used the high output RGB fixture to wash monsters, goblins, mad beasts and other freakish figures in a range of scary colours. Drawing on the Rogue fixture’s 16-bit master dimmer, they also relied on the interplay of moving light and shadows to endow the ghoulish scenery with menacing sense of animation.
In addition to illuminating scenic elements, the COLORado units were used to direct light on the lake itself as well as the surrounding trees to impart a haunting sense to the festival grounds. “The COLORados are a workhorse,” says Ritscher, who also installed the fixtures on the festival’s Lake Stage, which was designed by Andy Caroll. “Their colour and their IP65 rating made them the obvious choice to use in a festival centred around a lake.”
When they weren’t scaring festival-goers, the Chauvet fixtures were thrilling them at Suwanee Huluween’s big Amphitheatre Stage. Justin Casey of HELM Projects and his programmer Alex 'Herm' Schneider called on a collection of 30 Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures (also supplied by The Design Oasis) to serve up an endless stream of different looks throughout the festival.
Casey’s design called for 20 of the 5-headed Rogue R1 FX-B units to be positioned (five apiece) on each of the four PA scaffold towers that flanked the stage, two on each side, with the remaining 10 being arranged vertically and horizontally on upstage truss
A big reason for the success of his design, according to Casey was due to the help that he and Schneider received from their two techs: Justin Lyons and Owen Pike. “Part of this great experience was the great people we got to work with,’ he said. “This includes The Design Oasis team, who are always ready to roll - and their gear is amazing.”
(Jim Evans)
