Ultra Music Festival celebrates with Elation
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Production and lighting design for the Main Stage was by The Activity, their ninth year of involvement with the festival. The Las Vegas-based production and design firm, headed by lighting veteran Patrick Dierson, wanted to do something special for the festival’s 20th year and chose the Proteus Beam for a prominent look
“Because this was Ultra’s platinum anniversary we wanted an element within the design that would specifically represent its 20 years of celebration and the Platinum Beam’s bigger brother, the Proteus, seemed like the perfect choice,” stated Dierson, who served as lighting and production designer on this year’s Main Stage. The Activity worked directly with Ultra’s creative director Richard Milstein, as well as AG Production Services who supplied all of the lighting and video elements for this year’s Ultra.
Dierson approached the project with a simple design aesthetic in mind for the Proteus lights but their role expanded as show time approached. “During performances they were to simply be 20 static beams reaching out over the downtown Miami skyline emanating from the structure and then produce sky tracking movements during the short set changes to maintain a level of visual excitement,” he said. “By the time we were in full show mode, many of the guest LDs started to incorporate them into their performances, which obviously turned the units into a much larger production element for the performances.”
The 20th Anniversary edition of the spring music celebration ran from March 23-25 with over 165,000 revelers making their way to Bayfront Park in Miami. The three-day celebration ran like a highlight reel of EDM stars with 29 artists taking the Main Stage over the three days including names such as Swedish House Mafia, Hardwell, Steve Aoki, The Chainsmokers, Afrojack, Tiësto, David Guetta and many more.
Another Elation lighting fixture used on this year’s Main Stage was the Colour Chorus 72, a versatile 6-foot LED batten wash light (RGBA) often used for truss warming. When a powerful colour-changing unit was needed for detailing and highlighting, Dierson built 112 of the LED battens into the architecture of creative director Milstein’s stage design.
(Jim Evans)
