Elation at the Haitian Compas Festival
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The Haitian Compas Festival is a yearly celebration of the Haitian community that features popular musical acts along with traditional Haitian food and other facets of Haitian culture. After 18 years as a one-day event, this year’s festival was held over two days from 20-21 May at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami.
For Miami’s Haitian community, Compas was an opportunity to put the méringue sounds of konpa (compas) music in focus while partying beneath the bright lights of a truly contemporary rig. This year an all Elation rig provided the visual dynamics with some of the company’s newest lighting products in action: IP-rated Proteus Beam moving heads, Paladin blinder/strobe/wash lights, Platinum 1200 Wash lights and DTW Blinder 700 IP variable white LED blinders, as well as Elation’s award-winning Platinum FLX hybrid moving head and the long-time industry workhorse beam light, the Platinum Beam 5R Extreme.
Everlast Productions of Dania Beach, Florida, has provided lighting services for the festival for several years with Everlast’s Daniel Cortes serving as lighting designer and programmer for this year’s event.
The Elation lighting filled a series of horizontal trusses with some lights working from the floor. The new IP65-rated Proteus Beam worked from a downstage position and was used for front wash and dynamic effects for the audience. “My game plan was to use the frost on the fixtures and front wash the band with the beams and it worked out just fine,” commented Daniel, who worked with the Proteus fixtures for the first time. “
Working from the mid-stage on three separate runs of 30' truss were Platinum 1200 Wash fixtures, Paladin units and Platinum Beam 5R Extremes. The Platinum 1200 Washes were used for backlight with their 19 individual pixel RGBW LEDs allowing Daniel to pixel map and create eye candy looks for camera.
Like the Proteus Beams, Daniel found creative ways to use the Platinum Beam 5R Extremes, a light he has been using since its first generation. “Since I used frost on the Proteus Beams for front light I really never thought about using them on beams since I really only use them for dynamic effects,” he said.
Daniel used another of Elation’s newer lights, the variable-white DTW Blinder 700 IP, which were used as traditional audience blinder effects or warmed to enhance special moments. “The DTW Blinders were crazy bright as a blinder effect,” he said, “and their warm white and amber COB LEDs gave a nice ambient look as the music slowed down and a slow look came up.”
The innovative lighting technology continued upstage where Elation Platinum FLX hybrid units were placed on stage in front of an LED riser and flown in the air.
(Jim Evans)
