Designer Stephen Lieberman, president of SJ Lighting, has been lighting the UMF since its inception and certainly had his hands full with the ten-year anniversary where five stages needed a lot of production support. "The stage designs are not typically designed around specific equipment," comments Lieberman. "In a festival environment, there are basic needs and requirements that need to get fulfilled. We chose gear that suits those needs, and then we tried to put some 'bells and whistles' into the design to enhance the looks.
"This show had an interesting dynamic to it. As an outdoor festival in South Florida there is always the chance that the weather will turn bad at a moments notice; heavy machinery will fail on you when you need it most; or a critical piece of hardware could cripple production. In years past, we have seen all of the previously mentioned things happen in varying degrees but over the past 10 years we have become increasingly more efficient with this production."
For the main stage, Lieberman incorporated gear taken out of Main Light Industries, including six of the new High End Systems Showgun units and six 8' sections of Main Light Soft-Motion system with Soft-LED/Scrim 8'x33'panels. "I was thrilled to have this new technology on the main stage," says Lieberman.
"The panels gave us an amazing look. With the Soft-Motion system, I was able to pull the curtain out of the way for backline and changeovers; so logistically it was a great tool.
"Aesthetically, it was great to have DMX control of the system to do big reveals of the screen. The crowd went wild when we dropped the screen in for the first time each night. We had six panels broken into three independent sections. The nice part about that was that we where able to do many different looks. I had a laser upstage, so I could pull up the center panel and just let the laser fly. I enjoyed being in a festival environment where I could have a little fun with the Soft-LED panels and Soft-Motion system."
"UMF is such a fast-paced event; it's the perfect place to use the Soft-Motion system," says Giovanni Ciranni, Soft-LED manager with Main Light Industries. "The system gave Steve the ability to have so many different looks using just the one rig. When you can surprise a festival audience that is doing nothing but looking at the same stage, that's pretty cool. It is so easy to use Soft-Motion especially when combined with Soft-LED, that a designer gets an easy to use tool that allows for complicated looking effects. It really kept the looks fresh for each act. Steve did a great job on all of the stages."
(Jim Evans)
