Pete Robinson led the dbn crew of 28 who commenced the get-in on the Wednesday ahead of the opening on Saturday morning, and once again, their mission was to ensure that every stage looked individual and interesting and different from anything in the past.
The project entailed the supply of approximately 580 lighting fixtures including 224 moving lights and 75 strobes which were deployed site wide.
For the Main Stage, dbn's Stephen Page designed a house lighting rig that allowed for the two headliners - The Chemical Brothers and Major Lazer - to bring their own touring rigs in underneath.
This entailed the three 'house' overhead trusses being sub-hung as high as possible in the Serious Stages Supernova roof.
The Chemical Brothers' production featured a large LED screen, moving robots, lasers and a mega-mix of lighting instruments on floor mounted structures.
Major Lazer also had a substantial LED screen that was flown at the back, while downstage their impressive three-sided Periactoi-style towers - about 13ft high by 7ft wide made a huge visual impact. The first facade is a scenic speaker cabinet design trimmed with LED tape and with LED blinders hiding in the cones. The second is an LED video surface ... and the third contains moving lights and three pairs of colour changing strobes positioned on each of three levels - top, mid and bottom - of the tower.
dbn installed a full blacks truss at the back, and a series of blacks were used to mask the trusses for The Chemical Brothers. A banner truss and a video truss downstage of The Chemical Brothers' kit was flown for Ice Cube's show on the Saturday, which was then moved to the back and used as Major Lazer's main screen as they closed the event on Sunday.
The Chemical Brothers crew rigged during the day on Saturday behind a temporary black, while the stage was fully operational, adding another challenge for the crews.
A total of 58 motors were part of the dbn production supply for this stage - including 24 dedicated solely to The Chemical Brothers' production - and some creative rigging that was required to accommodate everything!
Moving lights on the house rig were all Clay Paky's with 16 Mythos, 18 x Sharpys and 20 x a.leda K10s fitted with B-EYE lenses, joined by 20 x Martin Atomic strobes, 18 x 2-lite Moles and four ARRI 2Ks - all looked after by Ed Croft using an Avolites Arena for control with a TitanNet Processor at stage.
(Jim Evans)
