Leading Northern Ireland rental house Production Services Ireland (PSI) supplied lighting equipment - including Robe moving lights - and crew for the City’s New Year’s Eve celebrations staged in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.
The show, headlined by Supergrass and the Pigeon Detectives with support from General Fiasco, Fighting With Wire and Universal Remedy, was attended by 5,000 enthusiastic revellers. It’s the first time that PSI has supplied the event for Belfast City Council.
PSI’s Sean Pagel explains that Robe was a ‘no-brainer’ choice for this event because the fixtures offered the serious amounts of flexibility needed for the multi-act show - for which he was also lighting all bands except the two headliners.
Their own LD’s – Paddy Sollit for the Pigeon Detectives and Martin Dudley for Supergrass - are also great Robe fans, so this was a universally popular move with them.
PSI supplied a total of 20 Robe ColorWash and 20 ColorSpot 700E AT fixtures for the show. Eight ColorWashes and 7 ColorSpots were positioned on the back truss, 7 ColorSpots and 8 ColorWashes on the mid truss, with the balance of 5 of each fixture on the deck.
All the lighting trusses were sub-hung on the 10 tonne capacity roof structure supplied by Star Events.
The back truss was used only for the headline acts, so the midstage truss acted as a back truss for all the opening artists, positioned in front of a swipe reveal that opened before the final 2 artists took to the stage.
The Robe fixtures worked hard as there was no generic wash lighting designed into the rig to reduce the hassle of focusing and cabling, etc, allowing the PSI crew to maximize already tight get-in and out times.
Other fixtures on the rig included Studio Due CS4s, 11 Atomic 3000 strobes, 36 ChromaQ ColourBlocks, 10 JTE PixelPARs, 10 2-cell Molefays, 10 4-cell Molefays, 6 8-cell Molefays and 10 Source Four Profiles.
Left to right - Sean Pagel, Brian Crowe and Joe Byrne
All lights for the event were controlled from an Avolites Diamond 4 console used by everyone except Sollitt, who brought in his own Chamsys console for the Pigeon Detectives’ set.
PSI First bought 12 Robe ColorSpots in September 2007 after seeing them in action at PLASA, and this was swiftly followed by purchasing 8 additional ColorSpots and 20 ColorWashes in 2008. this brought the total stock to 20 of each type of fixture in time for the 5-day Belsonic Festival in Belfast, with a line up including The Flaming Lips, The Enemy, The Go! Team and The Zutons.
“We opted for Robe because they needed something in the 700 power/size range that would really cut it and be rock-solid reliable,” says Pagel, adding that Robe came highly recommended from several sources. “The vast majority of contemporary show, tour and event specs will not contain lightsources below 700W,” he states, adding that they spent several months evaluating the units alongside their main rivals, from which Robe emerged a clear winner.
“We were impressed with the zoom range on the ColorSpots initially, although it’s also phenomenal on the Washes too! Full colour mixing is essential in today’s market, and these units do it well. Also, the animation wheel is smooth and highly effective”.
Cost effectivity also played a part – although it wasn’t the ultimate arbiter, and in fact the Robe’s performed far better than some of their higher priced competitor products.
“As a hire company, reliability is key - our units must be high quality, very robust and needing minimal workshop time. After talking to HSL who have the largest stock of Robe in the UK, we agreed that they were among the most reliable units on the market,” Pagel concludes.
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