The lighting coordination for the three day event was managed by 3srCreative, a new design firm comprised of designers Seth Jackson, Nathan Scheuer, Brent Sandrock and Jack Rushen, who had worked together previously on Selena Gomez's tour. CounterPoint provided a new set of challenges to overcome, as a tour typically consists of one artist, one concept, one designer and (hopefully) one cohesive vision, but a festival can have upwards of eight or nine of those each day.
"The lighting design for the music stages was designed to provide as much variety and flexibility as possible given the scope of the different artists coming in," explained Seth Jackson. "We took a look at the basic plots of the headliners and tried to find something that would give each artist something of what they were used to. Most of the fixture choices were based on that; for example, headliners A, B, & C all had Sharpys, but all had different counts and layouts. Our job is to get everyone as close as possible so they feel comfortable and move quickly and efficiently through the festival."
In addition to the two main headline stages, CounterPoint also had several smaller venues throughout the site including a DJ stage. Since that stage only needed to hold a DJ and turntable, 3sr was able to take more liberties with video elements and floor towers that each DJ could rearrange to their liking.
Equipment for the main stages and DJ stage included Clay Paky Sharpys, VL 3500 spots, VL 3500 washes, VL 3000 spots, Mac Auras, Martin Atomic 3000 strobes and multiple GrandMA 2 full consoles.
Due to the scale of the event, Bandit provided a sizeable crew to ensure all the stages were operating at the Bandit Standard. The crew included Chas Albea, Dave Butzler, Julie Cox, Andrew Heid, Adam McIntosh, Aaron Swetland, Jason Workman, Andy French, Terese Porterfield, Ty Veneziano, Billy Willingham, Ryan Waldron, Amanda Tullis and Shane Harrington. Shawn Lear was project manager.
(Jim Evans)
