Teamwork
is a great thing, and this was clearly evident for Slovenia’s 2017 PopRock
Festival, a high profile national TV live event broadcast from Ljubljana, where
lighting designer Crt Birsa and set designer Greta Godnic worked their creative
magic in a special collaboration with the help of 200 plus Robe lighting fixtures!
The
PopRock Festival, now in its second year, was staged at the Gospodarsko
Razstavisce exhibition centre for the first time, bringing an interesting mix of pop and rock artists
and bands who had battled it out to reach the final twelve.
The aesthetic
requirement was for a high-energy environment with enough latitude for all to
look different and cool – both on camera and onstage – where they were appreciated
by 700 excited music fans packed into
the venue to catch the action as it unfolded.
The
twelve contestants performed and were whittled down to three by a jury, from
which the public tele-voted to choose the winner!
A few
weeks earlier, Crt and Greta had delivered another eye-catching stenographic
and lighting design for the EMA, the event to select Slovenia’s 2017 Eurovision
entry. The look and feel of this was so successful, that by popular demand, the
producers requested that a slightly updated version be re-worked for the PopRock
Festival.
The
distinctive proto-industrial scenic steel crosses of the set architecture were
flown at slightly different angles than before, with clusters of ‘steel rods’ providing
further visual eye-candy. All these elements as well as the black gloss stage
floor which was shaped to the room, were designed to have a highly physical
presence as well as to take light beautifully.
Crt is one of Slovenia’s most
prolific LDs. He has used Robe products in his work for some time, and now it
is usually his first choice of moving light. “I love Robe for the excellent range, the
general brightness of the fixtures, their versatility and of course, the
reliability,” he stated.
The PopRock festival rig included
Spiiders, BMFL Blades, Pointes, MMX WashBeams, Squares, LEDBeam 100s, PARFect
100s, CycFX 8s, LEDWash 600s and ColorSpot 1200E ATs. All were supplied by
Slovenia’s largest lighting rental company, Event Lighting, which now has a
rental inventory of over 350 Robes.
With the multi-artist line up, a
live broadcast scenario and a live audience to impress, Crt selected the fixtures
for their flexibility and functionality. Due to the nature of the music, he
needed a vibrant colour palette and plenty of effects surprises ‘up his sleeve’.
The set crosses
were initially inspired by looking at the intricate structural steelwork in the
venue’s roof. Taking on the critical role of shaping of the performance space
as they did, they also provided a basic infrastructure for the lighting. The crosses
were lit with a combination of Robe PARFects and CycFX 8s.
With Crt
and Greta working so closely together on a fully integrated design from the
start, by the time it took shape onstage, Crt could finish the lighting plot in
a day in terms of fixture placement. As much as he thought about how lighting
would work in relation to the set elements, Greta considered how the set pieces
could be rigged leaving space for lights and paths for the beams.
The
lighting rig mirrored the shape of the stage floor, and the set was painted a
medium grey shade, both to contrast with the floor and to respond beautifully when
illuminated in any colour. Crt was also able to do some crafty accenting using
strobe like effects around the set which brought everything alive.
At the
heart of the rig was a lighting ‘chandelier’, a square shaped truss loaded with
a high concentration of lights – 16 x Spiiders, 8 x Pointes, 16 x LEDBeam 100s in
a 4×4 matrix nucleus, and four Robe Square fixtures delineating each córner.
The main
overhead trussing design comprised three diagonally flown squares of which the
chandelier was the central one. Thirty-six Pointes were the core effects
lights, with eight each loaded on to the three diamonds and the other twelve
positioned around the front and to the sides of the stage.
Crt and Greta
didn’t want a large imposing LED screen upstage. Instead, they decided to light
through a stretched gauze back-cloth as a rear visual feature, with a mix of
Sunstrips and Robe LEDBeam 100s concealed behind, then revealed for
power-accents and WOW moments.
Twelve BMFL
Blades covered the centre and backlighting with a row along the upstage edge of
the stage deck and two behind the set at the sides. Their huge fat beams were great for shooting
out into the audience and the powerful projection capabilities helped bring a new
dimension to the scenery. Two more at the back of the hall were used as follow
spots.
Ten MMX
WashBeams and 10 more Spiiders on the front and rear trusses were optimised to
light the stage, set and orchestra.
Twenty-two
LEDWash 600s washed and coloured evenly down each side of the venue with
another six on the outer two squares, an ideal position to highlight the
crosses and the venue’s prominent structural pillars and wash the ceiling.
Fundamental
to the lighting and scenography concept succeeding was the desire to fully
embrace the building in the show environment, rather than trying to shut it out
or mask it off.
The
PARFect 100s – fitted with 10 and 20 degree diffusion filters – were fitted to
the venue’s pillars and spread out over the floor, used for set dressing in
conjunction with CycFX 8s.
Six CycFX
8s under the stage at the front were used judiciously just enough to give the
illusion that the the stage was floating, while other units assisted the
PARFects in lighting the inner surfaces of the crosses and the venue’s
structural RSJs.
Crt programmed and ran all the
lighting on a ChamSys console using a mix of timecode and manual cuing. All of
the most complicated sets – mainly the rock bands – he ran manually.
He comments that having the
orchestra and a live backing band really added to the vibe with richness and sonic
texture, and working with the set for a second time, with all the basics in the
console already, gave him a bit more time to experiment with new looks and
effects for the cameras.
“Having this many and such a wide
variety of Robe fixtures at my fingertips gave me plenty of creative options, so
it was down to my programming skills and imagination to be able to deliver 15
completely different looking performances,” he said.
All of this looked equally good on
camera for TV director Nejc Levstik as it did live – a lively, animated collage
of lighting looks and scenes that also made the space look a lot bigger than it
actually was!
PopRock Slovenia 2017 was presented
by Anja Križnik Tomažin, Tin Vodopivec and Perica Jerkovi, and won by Anabel with her song, “A Cup
of Coffee”.
Photos: Louise Stickland
