This year's Grillstock Festival boasted performances from The Fratellis, The Stranglers and the Cuban Brothers as it welcomed over 14,000 BBQ-lovers to the two-day event. Complete with a King of the Grill barbeque showdown, two music stages and endless food vendors, Utopium was tasked with creating appropriate stage sets and lighting for the festival areas.
For the bar lighting, site lighting and stage lighting, Utopium supplied 20 Chauvet Q-Wash 419Z LEDs, 12 Martin MAC Quantum Profiles, 11 Chauvet Rogue RH1 Hybrids, 18 Chauvet Nexus 4 x 4 panels, nine 4 lite Molefays, six Selecon Arena 2Ks and 12 of Utopium's new SGM Q-7s. All lighting was controlled by an Avolites Arena controller. Utopium also supplied Antari HZ-500s to add extra ambience to the stage and a 6m x 6m video wall, in conjunction with Production AV. With the Grillstock Bar stage, a Budweiser Budvar, great music and an epic photo book, the festival was busy from dusk till dawn.
As well as lights, Utopium worked with Evans Audio Visual Staging who provided two 8ft x 8ft rolling risers for the main stage and decking and platforms for the front of house, camera riser, main bar, webber stage, DR BBQ stage and the Meat Rave. Evans also supplied two DJ plinths with legs and skirt, and two 50" Plasma screens with stands for the main bar.
Utopium's Jon Newman comments, "Our range of energy efficient LED lighting featured at Grillstock and enabled us to help organisers reduce the festival's carbon footprint. As a Bristol-based company, we worked closely with other local suppliers to help minimise transport emissions, following on from Bristol's year as European Green Capital.
"This is our third year working with Grillstock and every year we look forward to working with the organisers to put together a full production which translates to every element of the event. With meaty activities running throughout the day, it was vital that the lighting design was suitable for use in the daytime and added to the on stage action in the evening."
(Jim Evans)
