Robe at the Colours of Ostrava festival
- Details
The annual four-day international multi-genre festival is staged on the site of the former ironworks at Dolní Vítkovice, Ostrava, Czech Republic. The site was inaugurated in 1830 and was a major hub of metal production activity in the area until 1998. It now provides an impressive and highly charismatic backdrop to the event with its unique industrial architecture. The lively festival includes some 20 performance stages with over 350 live music acts, plus discussions, debates, theatre productions, films and workshops, and is enjoyed by around 50,000 people.
Colours of Ostrava’s technical production is delivered by SMART Productions, a company run by Josef “Pepa” Źenišek who has been technical director of the festival since 2011. He and his team co-ordinate all the technical elements site wide, which will often include an overnight de-rig and re-rig on the main stages to accommodate requirements from the headliners together with their ‘specials’ packages.
RentalPRO has been involved in supplying lighting, sound and video to the ArcelorMittal Stage for the last 7 years, and this year received a brief from SMART Productions who had scanned all the band riders and compiled a list of requirements.
The kit was therefore chosen for maximum features and effects - with the list comprising 26 x BMFL Blades, 38 x Pointes and 34 x Spiiders - all bringing plenty of colour, movement and detail to the stage.
Eighteen of the BMFL Blades were rigged on six upstage trussing towers – with five columns of LED screen positioned in between – and three BMFL Blades per tower. Four more were on top of four floor-standing vertical trussing towers, also at the back of stage.
The remaining four BMFL Blades were positioned at the FOH tower and used as follow spots. This is becoming quite a trend right now, as the units will perfectly match the colours and quality of light from other Robe fixtures on the rig.
Fifteen of the Pointes were on the front truss, with nine – in three groups of three, ACL style - on three small sections of truss positioned between the six vertical towers at the back. Another six were deployed on the floor … with the other eight in pairs mid-way up the four floor-mounted vertical towers. This gave a good spread of these dynamic multi-effects lights all around the performance space.
Eighteen Spiiders were rigged on the six upstage verticals, matched with the 18 x BMFL Blades on the same trusses, while another 16 were in pairs taking the top and bottom positions of the floor-based towers (with the pair of Pointes in between). The final two were on the FOH Tower for illuminating the audience.
ArcelorMittal Lights were run via a Road Hog and a grandMA2 light console – LDs had the choice - and Kamil was assisted by programmer Jan Hons Šuškleb.
Robe fixtures were used on other stages including the Main with BMFL Blades and BMFL Wash XFs, ColorStrobes and Pointes; and the Electro stage featured PixelPATTs, Pointes and LEDBeam 100s.
(Jim Evans)
