The Netherlands - When Easter is approaching, many people are busy trying to decide how they want to spend their long weekend off, but for the employees at Stagelight, they are already busy working on one of first major music festivals in the Dutch calendar. Paaspop is a three-day festival that takes place in Schijndel on Easter weekend each year, but the build-up starts much earlier.
Each stage at the festival not only has to be built from scratch, but also equipped with sound and lighting equipment worthy of some of the biggest national and international acts. This year’s event saw names like Anouk, Editors and Tiësto among the headliners.
Stagelight has been providing Paaspop with lighting equipment for a long time and this year was no exception. In total, project manager Hermen Klerks selected a grand total of 1,310 light fixtures from Infinity and Showtec for the event. These included 400 Showtec Spectral M800 Q4 RGBW LED outdoor spotlights with a previous incarnation of the Spectral M800 adding another 210 fixtures to the mix. Both models offer colourful spot lighting with dim and strobe effects.
The Showtec Spectral M3000 Zoom Q4 MKII was also on site with 100 of these RGBW LED outdoor spotlights adding versatile spot to wash light effects thanks to their wide, motorised zoom range. More wash lighting came in the form of the Showtec Helix S5000 Q4 with 184 fixtures providing colourful wash effects and the lights’ 5-section control offering plenty of possibilities. A total of 48 Showtec Pixelstrip 40s were also on display and with each one offering 40 individually controllable RGB LEDs, the options were almost endless.
Many light fixtures by Infinity were also used at Paaspop 2024. These included 100 iB-2R moving heads whose razor-sharp beams, vivid colours and fast movements added dynamic lighting effects. These were complemented by 64 Furion S401 moving spotlights that added more fast-moving colours with extra effects coming from the built-in animation wheel and gobos to The Silver Warehouse stage. More fast-moving beam and wash effects were added by 50 iW-1915 and 48 iW-720 moving washes.
The fast-moving light effects continued with 48 iFX-615, a rotating RGBW bar that creates stunning beam and sweep effects, and 40 iM-2515 RGBW Matrix lights that offer full pixel control. To top it all off, 18 of Infinity’s Furion flagship model, the S601 Profile, provided a fully featured moving head that has four dual axis moving blades to quickly create various shapes, a zoom range of 6.5° to 45°, two rotating gobo wheels with gobos and Digital Motion FX.
The setup at this year’s Paaspop was impressive and those who attended certainly seem to have been impressed. All 30,000 early-bird tickets for the 2025 edition have already sold out.
