eclipse Staging Services proudly supported the loud return of the 15-hour mini-music festival, DXBeach at Zero Gravity, with their audio, lighting, and video services, along with laser expertise from Laser FX and special effects from Stage FX.
As eclipse handled the event from the ground up, the beachside venue and sandy dance floor provided challenges of logistics, which Head of Video Lee Worthington explained, “Just getting the equipment to where it needs to be can be a constant challenge, however the site management from our side made the install as smooth as could be expected.”
The video crew supplied an up stage screen which was comprised of a 12m x 6m 9mm ROE LED screen as well as a 2.4m x 1.2m DJ booth screen of the same product, with a Green Hippo TAIGA media server supplying content and an Analog Way switching system allowing flexible access to the screens at both front of house and back stage for touring inputs. The change over from support to main act was pretty much a whole system switch Mr. Worthington recalled, “this was a very smooth transition and was made very easy because of the pre-production work done between the eclipse and FBS technical teams in the lead up to the event.”
To escape the Dubai heat, the whole team loaded the equipment in during the evenings running up to the event. The lighting arsenal consisted of a kit from Martin Professional and Clay Paky with a grandMA2 Full-Size, Chamsys MQ100, Avolites Pearl Expert, Luminex GigaCore RFO16, and Luminex Eth8-II for control. eclipse Head of Lighting, Craig Ralph commented, “using the Luminex Eth8-II we were able to seamlessly switch between the multi-console set-up at front of house as each visiting Lighting Designer had requested a specific and different desk.
The lighting network was being managed and monitored from FOH using a MacBook Pro, which allowed us to give immediate control at the click of a button to any of the consoles at the FOH control area.” He continued, “The tour rider was adhered to exactly as is was presented to us and Jonny Godsmark, Fatboy Slim’s Lighting Designer. He was very handy to have onsite during the set-up as it allowed us to fire any questions that we had about fixture placement etc off to him and have them answered immediately.”
The audio side of things “has become more refined for us each time,” commented Head of Audio John Parkhouse. He continued: “there are always concerns with offsite noise propagation for nearby residences on pretty much all outdoor events these days and so I opted for us to provide an Array Processed d&b V-Series system with a number of instantly recallable snapshots to handle a number of scenarios, some of which I created beforehand and some of which I was able to create and engage on the fly. I was able to factor in temperature and humidity changes throughout as well as focus the attention of the system dependent on audience coverage requirements. I obviously saved the maximum headroom for the headliner Fatboy Slim and I have to say I thought his set was fantastic.
Once more I feel our d&b system was critical to immersing the entire audience in a delivery of such sonic clarity and power. When d&b say Array Processing is “democracy for listeners 2.0″ they certainly mean it, every spot in the venue sounded exactly the same for every audience member – pulsating and vibrant, exactly as it should be for such an event.”
“From all parties I would say this event felt like a very well honed and executed exercise. We are looking forward to the next one in November, where we will of course look to pull a few more tricks out of our d&b tool kit.” Concluded Mr. Parkhouse.
See video footage of the event here.
