The month-long, high profile event was staged at London's Roundhouse venue in Camden Town, featuring 62 international artists over 31 days including Coldplay, the Foo Fighters, Adele, Linkin' Park, Paul Simon and many, many more. The action was broadcast on TV and radio and streamed live on the internet.
The three grandMA2 consoles were networked together. One ran lights, one ran video/visuals and the third was used as a programming facility running MA Lighting's visualiser software grandMA 3D, and also as a 'hot' backup. MA Lighting UK's office supplied technical and on-site service and support to the FIX8 crew who were led by Neil Trenell and Jamie Baker.
The Festival lighting designer and operator was Richard White - and this was his first experience of using grandMA2. The lighting equipment was supplied by White Light and the video by Creative Technology. Neil Trenell and Jamie Baker designed the video system which was run via two Hippotizer HD v3 I7 media servers, triggered by the video dedicated grandMA2 light.
Touring consoles brought in by some of the bands were seamlessly integrated into the grandMA2 system via DMX. This linked them to the single MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) so they could harness its immense processing power to access the full 'house' lighting and video rigs.
Manchester based FIX8 supplied the two Hippo media servers. Content stored on these was beamed onto five columns of Hibino 12mm LED screen onstage, along with two side screens made from Barco I-lite 6 LED and 50 panels of Spyder 30mm LED, which were fixed to the venue's first floor balconies, primarily to provide 'filler' for some of the camera shots.
(Jim Evans)
