Furthermore, 2.5 Km of LED festoon lighting was used to enhance the ambience around the main arena. A team of 10 Colour Sound techs were crew chiefed by the unfazable Andy Melleney at Reading and two artics worth of kit was dispatched from the company's HQ in Park Royal, North West London.
The historically significant and ever-popular Berkshire festival signalled almost the end of another busy summer season for Colour Sound, on which MD Haydn Cruickshank comments: "It's been massively busy again and we have been lucky enough to be involved in some great events. It's always good to be at Reading, in fact this is our 21st year at the festival! It is such a landmark event and great to see its continuing success."
In the Dance arena Colour Sound revisited its rave culture roots and also created a base production design for lighting and visuals that took its creative starting point from last year's design which everyone loved, prompting the remodelling into a new look and feel for 2014.
The lighting positions were located on a front truss, an advanced truss over the audience, a ground supported truss at the rear of stage and on the PA wings flanking the stage to extend the width of the performance space.
The moving light fixtures included Robe MMX Spots and LEDWash 300s together with CSE Beam 200s - 12 of each, which were joined by 12 Showtech Sunstrips and 12 x Martin Atomic strobes. "It was a classic EDM aesthetic," comments Andy Melleney.
The stage was framed with a 12m wide video proscenium arch with 1m wide legs made up of Colour Sound's proprietary BT12 LED screen product, and upstage of the DJ booth was a 9 x 4 back wall of their BT6 version of the screen.
Colour Sound asked Dave Whiteoak to run the control end of the visuals, which enabled all those DJs and VJs turning up with their own visual content to be played out on the screens. For those who didn't have their own content, Whiteoak wove his own digital magic into the mix!
Lighting FOH was looked after by Woody with ChamSys consoles and playback wings - along with today's most essential piece of festival FOH kit - the Nespresso coffeemaker. Chris Wilks and Alex Ryan oversaw all the incoming floor packages and other specials.
Additional BT6 LED screen was supplied for Pendulum's set to clad the front of their DJ riser, and Colour Sound also supplied extra lighting and video elements for LD Alan King for drum 'n' bass act Wilkinson's set. The rock oriented line-up on the Lock Up stage featured a stark minimalist look with lights rigged onto a low ground supported back truss - its height dictated by the tent roof - and a flown front truss.
The fixtures in here were eight Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs, eight 6-lamp bars of PARs, eight Sunstrips and eight Atomic strobes. Martin Dudley was the very enthusiastic operator - also a Reading boy - with another ChamSys console, assisted by Joe Beardsmore. Exactly the same kit was also supplied for the corresponding mirrored stages at the Leeds site at Brahham Park for the same stages.
This same August Bank Holiday weekend, Colour Sound additionally supplied around 550 moving lights and other fixtures for the two outdoor stages at the Creamfields EDM extravaganza at Daresbury, Warrington, and lighting and video for multiple stages at the SW4 Festival on London's Clapham Common, bringing another hugely busy 2014 festival season almost to a close in style.
(Jim Evans)
