The event, compered by Keith "Cheggers" Chegwin brought two days of the very best music from the 1980s - indie rock from the Boomtown Rats, Big Country, Heaven 17, etc.; classic pop from Jason Donovan, Boney M, Go West - and contemporary pop with Union J, 911, Stooshi and many more to the leafy heartlands of Tring.
Chilfest was started last year initially as a novel and interesting way of celebrating UEP's 15th year of successful operation. As the idea gained momentum, it took on the format of a full scale two day music based festival with fun and entertainment for all the family.
The Chilfest event and concept went down such a storm that Steve Butcher and his team decided to go ahead and do it again, building on their knowledge and presenting an even bigger and better experience for their audience in 2014.
This year they expanded the schedule - adding one day - together with a larger stage, a rolling riser system to optimise the changeover times and some special new features including widening the whole presentation space in the lush and leafy green environs of Pendley Meadow, Tring.
Says Butcher, "We were all delighted with this year's results. We had a trouble free event and brought new standards of excellence and production values to a truly boutique festival setting that you would normally only expect on much larger shows."
Site and stage manager Andy Nurse was one of the key figures in Butcher's core production team. Nurse also designed the audio system in conjunction with Hugh Jones from audio rental company HPSS and his company Production Element dealt with all the artists' liaison, dressing rooms, riders and artists' backstage requirements.
The stage was supplied by Trust Events, rigging came from Letchworth-based Production Plus and the event rigger was Eddie Singer.
A production lighting design was created by Simon Maddison. To maximise every possible centimetre of the 15 metre Orbit-style stage, they shaped two of the sub-hung lighting trusses to the curvature of the roof, with the ends of these further extended with scaff pipes, giving some mid-level side fill fixture positions. With six or seven bands on each day .. the floor area was left completely clear of lighting.
A straight truss at the back held the 10 x 4m Glux 12 LED screen, and this covered the whole upstage area. Immediately in front of that were four vertical scaff bars on tank traps and also secured to the trussing above for additional stability, each rigged with three Robe RobinPointes.
Other fixtures dotted over the trusses were 24 x Robe LEDBeam 100s, eight Robe LEDWash 300s and four LEDWash 600s - the small size of these was ideal for fitting the space. There were also 12 x Clay Paky A.leda K10 LED washes and 12 x Miltech LED battens plus - a quick salute to lighting of the 1980s - two bars of 6 PARs at the front for very basic stage washes.
Six SGM Sixpack pixel blinders were installed downstage and used for audience illumination and 10 of UEP's new SGM XL5 RGB LED strobes were rigged above and used for classic strobe effects as well as floods, proving their excellence at both applications.
On top of the PA towers each side were six CP Sharpys and these were used for shooting beam effects into the crowd.
Four of SGM's new high powered G-Spot profiles were placed on the PA wings either side of stage to boost low level front lighting across the crowd, which was also a great atmosphere builder.Two Robert Juliat Korrigan follow spots were provided at FOH and the house lighting desk was a ChamSys MQ Expert with an Executive Wing.
UEP supplied a full IMAG and visuals package which was co-ordinated by Pacey Prestage (Visuals and VJ'ing) and Mike Kane (cameras and LED screens).
After great results last year, UEP asked
