Mavericks at the double at Glastonbury
- Details
Approaching the festival’s Acoustic Stage from a distance, Bloss was impressed with the looks the festival LD was conjuring up with some large spots. “I thought for sure, given how bright their output was, that they were 1700w arc lamp fixtures,” said the Nashville-based designer. “So, I was completely surprised when I learned that these fixtures actually had LED engines.”
The fixtures that astonished Bloss shared the name of the band he lights. They were Mavericks, or more precisely 16 Maverick MK3 Spot and 18 Maverick MK3 Wash fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Fineline Lighting.
For Bloss, his first impression of the Maverick fixtures proved to be well-founded. This was evident as soon as he sat down at his console. “The challenges I encountered at Glastonbury were what any LD faces when walking into a festival on the day of the show,” he said. “You have very limited time on the console with the rig before the show starts. The only time I had to patch, clone, and focus positions was the two 30-minute set changes before we went on. The MK3s were easy fixtures to figure out. They cloned into my rig seamlessly.”
Having integrated the fixtures into his show, Bloss proceeded to rattle the Acoustic Stage with some powerful looks that mixed big beams, deep intense colours, a bold backdrop and well-placed audience lighting to pull the crowd into his clients’ hard-driving performance.
“With Glastonbury being such an important festival, I wanted to make the light show look as large as possible,” says Bloss. “It may have been called The Acoustic Stage, but with The Mavericks being a nine-piece band full of rock n’ roll and screaming electric guitars, I had to make the lighting fit - so there was nothing ‘acoustic’ about my show!”
The 16 Maverick MK3 Spot fixtures in Bloss’ rig were flown six on the mid-stage truss, and six on the upstage truss, with four positioned on the floor for aerial looks. His 18 MK3 Wash units were flown six apiece on upstage, mid-stage and down-stage truss.
Bloss relied on the Maverick MK3 Spot units in his rig to create some large gobo looks. “It was really a lot of fun to use these fixtures,” he says. “They have plenty of power, so when you put a gobo in and zoom it all the way to 54 degrees, you can create some really powerful larger than life beam looks. They also maintained a flat field of focus even when fully zoomed out.”
(Jim Evans)
