When lighting designer Travis Shirley was tasked this summer (his fifth year with the festival) with lighting the festival's Main Stage - called the Ranch Arena - he knew he also had an experience mission: to offer an equal opportunity lighting rig for both daytime and nighttime artists. To do this, he designed and specified a lighting rig that would cut through daytime ambience and that would also do justice to light up embellishments of the stage design. Longtime festival vendor Christie Lites (rep Robert Roth) worked closely with Shirley to meet his equipment specifications.
This year's EFF Main Stage artists with whom Shirley worked included festival staples The String Cheese Incident, Bassnectar, Major Lazer, Disco Biscuits, STS9 and more headliners.
Production designer Tom McPhillips and his Atomic Design team designed the five stages, entrance and other event structures.
McPhillips embellished the main Ranch Arena stage with detailed Steampunk ornamentation, a mashup of historic styles and cultural art that took on an "electric time machine vibe," Shirley says. "For this I decided that a huge LED lighting rig would accent the fascia and coincide with the festival's 'electric' theme."
Shirley chose 165 Chroma Q Color Force 72 fixtures as the rig's focal point. The LED batten colour changing fixtures washed the large areas of the stage with far-reaching saturated colour.
"I went with LEDs because I was thinking about the name, Electric Forest, and thought it would be great to create an electric looking stage."
The Color Force "wake up the entire rig," he adds. He describes the three horizontal arrays curved overhead expanding in width from upstage to downstage, to create a central focal point. "The bands perform in front of that, they get bigger in width," he explains. "Then there are three vertical arrays. So, with three vertical on each side of the stage, and the three horizontal, you have nine arrays that creates a forced perspective picture box or performance space."
For trussing, he created a series of arcs by using Christie Link bars and the components in the CL Type "B" (16") trussing system. This truss design gave him an "incredible depth" and enhanced the performance space, he says.
With so many great acts on the bill, Shirley wanted to ensure each had an opportunity to look great. "Even in the daytime the Color Force had an impact. I didn't want it to have a different feel from afternoon to nighttime transition and it worked. Many times you shine lights in the audience's face and that's all you can do in the daytime. Color Force allowed everyone to have a great show with the same tools no matter when they played."
Along with the 165 Color Force, Christie Lites supplied 21 MAC Viper AirFX, 25 Martin MAC Quantums Washes, 24 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes, 24 Elation Platinum Beam 5Rs and two grandMA Series 2 full consoles. Conventional fixtures, dimming, hazers, cable, rigging and trussing completed the package.
(Jim Evans)
