Lighting designer Preston Hoffman
created a dynamic and flexible production lighting design for the 2015 Summer
Camp Festival staged at Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe, Illinois, U.S.A. His
stage, the Moonshine Stage, was based primarily around 16 x Robe BMFL Spots and
10 x Robe Pointe moving lights.
It was the second time that Boston-based
Preston, also LD for headlining jam band moe. had worked at the four day event.
The lighting equipment was supplied by Chicago-based Performance Lighting, a
recent investor in BMFLs and Pointes.
Preston was absolutely delighted when
he learned he would have access to both types of fixtures for this show.
He was the first LD in the U.S. to
ever use the just-launched BMFL Spot to light a building exterior, in a ground-breaking
installation at Boston City Hall for the 2014 Boston Calling Festival.
Summer Camp 2015 was actually another
BMFL first for Preston – it was the first time he used Robe’s incredibly
powerful game-changing fixture as the primary moving light on a concert stage!
He has used the Pointe regularly on
several tours since its launch in 2013.
A major challenge for the Moonshine
Stage lighting design was that any equipment – trussing, set, lighting, etc. –
had to be rigged off two roof beams with limited weight loading that were part
of the semi-permanent stage’s structure. Similar to the concept of the Pyramid
Stage at Glastonbury, this encapsulates the spirit of the Festival, and has
been utilized by the site for many years.
Preston designed a trussing
infrastructure that formed two large V shapes – each 50 feet long – with stretched
Lycra ‘sails’ in between to make excellent video projection surfaces and adding
a lightweight but eye-catching set element to the space, which also matched the
ceiling décor of stretched reflective material.
“I wanted to ensure the lighting
didn’t become lost amongst the video and projections,” explained Preston, “and
the BMFLs and Pointes have plenty of punch so they were ideal.”
The BMFLs were really maximized,
especially for those awesome big aerial effects blasting through the night sky
which he really loved. He also employed plenty of tight BMFL beams and graphics
slicing through the haze, which looked “amazing,” and both the BMFLs and
Pointes enabled spectacular projection and texturing on the sails using their
gobos and animation wheels. “The idea was simple, different and memorable,” he
stated.
Pointes and BMFLs currently remain Preston’s
favorite fixtures for the brightness, gobo selection and generally rich feature
sets. “You really can get a huge amount out of these fixtures, you will never
get bored and can guarantee, in a festival scenario like this, to keep bringing
up new and fresh looks for every artist taking the stage.”
Preston used grandMA control for lighting
at Summer Camp, and his personal crew chief from Performance Lighting was
Autumn Venevia.
He also has several other ongoing and
upcoming projects which will feature BMFLs and Pointes.
