Lollapalooza Berlin returned to the Olympiastadion site for the second year (photo: Stephan Kwiecinski)
Germany - The European summer music festival season wound up with a few notable events including Lollapalooza Berlin, which returned to the Olympiastadion site for the second year with a line-up including the Swedish House Mafia, UFO361, Kings of Leon, Rita Ora, Hozier, Twenty One Pilots, Billie Eilish and many more.
Robe moving lights were in evidence site-wide, supplied by a number of different companies including TSE AG (Main Stage North) and Black Box Music (Main Stage South) both from Germany and Colour Sound Experiment from the UK which delivered lighting and video for the dance-orientated Perry’s Stage.
For Main Stage North, a production design / top rig was created by Marco Hoch from TSE AG which allowed artists bringing in their own specials packages ‘underneath’ to be quickly and painlessly accommodated, and have a good, versatile all-round compliment of lights in the roof ready to be hooked into their consoles.
This year’s house rig included 90x Robe moving lights – a mix of BMFL Spots, BMFL WashBeams, Spiiders and MegaPointes. These were joined by strobes and blinders and lots of fog and haze, all controlled through two grandMA2 full sizes.
Ludwig Laudan, the Main Stage North house LD / operator who also provided technical assistance for guest LDs, commented, “BMFLs are currently simply the festival fixture of the moment. Their strong output and excellent colours make them ideal.”
They created the lighting plot offering BMFL Spots and Spiider LED wash beams familiar to all of the guest LDs, complemented by BMFL WashBeams as front lighting and Pointes on the floor and in the rig for backlight effects.
“Pointes offer an array of effects, but the ‘base’ mix for our festivals this summer have been the BMFLs and Spiiders, they are powerful both during the day and evening and register against the upstage LED walls,” said Ludwig.
Each night of the two-day event, the last three or four bands playing the main stage brought in their own specials, with Kings of Leon’s including another 12 x MegaPointes.
TSE AG also supplied the North Stage sound system and lighting and sound packages for Kidzapalooza and the Weingarten Stage.
Lighting and video for Perry’s Stage were supplied by UK rental company Colour Sound Experiment, which has a large Robe inventory. The team there created a production lighting design which included Robe Pointes, MegaPointes and Spiiders – 132 x Robe fixtures in total – plus other lights.
Martin Garrix brought in his ‘Anima’ festival touring system underneath the production rig, which included 110 x Robe Spikies and 4 x SuperSpikies operated by his lighting designer Gabe Fraboni.
Artists using the house rig had lighting operated by Dave Ross, Colour Sound’s FOH lighting director for the event, and the crew chief was Ricardo Lorenzini.
Black Box Music, also from Berlin, was the lighting and audio rental suppliers for the Main Stage South, where the production design included 40 x Robe BMFLs - 20 x BMFL WashBeams and 20 x BMFL Spots - plus 24 x MegaPointes all in the top rig, with another eight BMFL Spots available as the ‘house’ floor package. The operator was Markus Axmann.
(Jim Evans)

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