Hangout Festival returns with Bandit Lites
- Details
Bandit’s vice president of production, Dizzy Gosnell, has designed the festival lighting rig for many seasons, and he meticulously works to ensure the headliners on each stage have a plethora of lighting to work with from washes, spots, beams, strips/strobes and blinders/safety lights spanning across both rigs.
“The first thing I try to get is to layer the lamps on each truss,” explains Gosnell. “For example, having lamps perched from the top chord, outrigged down from the top chord, mounted hung down from the top chord, perched up on the bottom chord and then hung under the bottom chord. On one truss this gives you five layers for the audience from just one truss. You do that with four cross stage trusses and step them, you now have twenty layers or more of big, repeated arrays, without choking the roof for visiting acts bringing in their own elements if they want to.”
LED blinders function both for the show and as ‘house lights’ for safe exits if needed during weather evacuations.
“We’ve used that a few times for weather evacs, and they work really well compared to the good ‘ol DWE heads that needed massive amounts of genny power to keep running,” shared Gosnell. “LED blinders can run on a much smaller genny set so they can shut the big ones down if needed.”
The Main Stage base system included Chauvet Maverick MK3 Spots, Claypaky Sharyps, Claypaky Mythos 2, Elation SixBar 1000 IP65, Elation SixPar 100 IP65, Elation CuePix WW4 and GLP X4. The Surf Stage base featured Chauvet Rogue R2X Washes, Claypaky Mythos 2, Elation ACL 360 bars, Elation SixPar 100 IP 65 and Elation Paladin IP 65.
Bandit also supplied lighting for Zedd, Megan Thee Stallion and Fall Out Boy’s sets on the Surf Stage.
The most important factor in the rig was giving the visiting LDs as many toys in the air as possible for both night-time with haze, as well as during the day so there is some bump and grind action for the daylight hours.
“Of course, budget is an issue,” notes Gosnell. “‘More lights, less motors’ is one mantra I keep at the front of my mind. No one buys a ticket to see a motor or a truss, they’d much rather see something with light coming out of it. I keep the same mindset on trucking, which may be even more true today with trucks being scarce and at a premium. I make the system as efficient as possible for truck-space. This year we got the two systems into two trucks with a third for added floor packages for various acts.”
Gosnell does note that all his “scribbles and doodles” would be useless without the people who put it together and make it run.
“Without fantastic crew chiefs Sam Morgan (Main) and Kelly Feild (Surf) and our wonderful techs Carter Hopkins, Andrew Ellis, Jake Riddell, Tim Keller and Brian Bogovic, nothing would have happened onsite,” he says. “Their tireless work in some rather heavy weather and demanding overnight schedules this year was amazing.”
Additional support was provided by Bandit’s team in the Nashville shop. Project manager Gene Brian (Geno) oversaw and masterminded the actual build of the two systems as well as served as the point man for headline LDs on patch, desk and control issues.
“He ran a really right ship for the prep and build of the rig,” Gosnell enthuses. “Finally, Lambda Productions, the venerable Hadden Hippsley and stage managers Joe Gordon and Paul Gussack really made things as smooth for us as they possibly could and were totally supportive of our guys and gals onsite.”
