Long before the first Ultra Music fans began filing into downtown’s Bayfront Park this March, the festival had already begun playing itself out in the mind of Patrick Dierson. “We started working on the pre-production process, several months out in advance and went over things again and again to get this right,” said the widely acclaimed designer and head of The Activity, who handles technical management for the iconic event’s main stage.
Working with Technical Producer, Ray Steinman, Creative Director, Richard Milstein, and the various vendors, Dierson dove deep into the artist advances to start laying out plans for the technical infrastructure that would ultimately be needed to support all the festival’s guest LDs and their clients.
“The focus of our work is always on the guest technical teams and getting them everything they need to deliver their best shows,” said Dierson. “Given the uneven weight loads and tightly packed rigging needs, there are always challenges, but in the end, we wanted to give the guests what they needed.”
Among the things selected to ensure that stellar shows be delivered for main stage artists like John Summit, Skrillex, Armin van Buuren, Deadmau5 at this year’s festival was a collection of over 300 CHAUVET Professional fixtures, which, like the rest of the rig was supplied by TAG. Among these fixtures were 120 Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes, which were used often during the three-day festival by guest LDs to connect the big crowd to the artists on the main stage.
“They were our main strobing fixture,” Dierson said of the fixtures. “Their intense output, coupled with their ability to have separate color control on their plate, opened the way to some unique and flexible programming. Packaging this into an IP65 rated housing makes the Strike M a no-brainer for this type of festival situation. We always must account for the potential of inclement weather — and we received that quite a bit this year. The Strikes never failed.”
While the Color STRIKE M units amped up crowd connections, a group of 184 COLORado PXL 16 motorized battens were opening up a wide range of creative options for visiting lighting crews. Drawing on the fixture’s generous zoom range and titling capabilities, LDs were able to conjure up radically different configurations of light on stage to reflect the music and personas of their clients.
“The PXL Bar 16s played a very unique role in that they were embedded into the center portion of the stage structure to create a sort of capsule of light that worked its way across the stage deck, up the side walls, and across the roof,” explained Dierson. “It was a very unique configuration that ultimately produced some amazing looks.”
Advanced planning and close collaboration were only part of the reason why the Ultra main stage worked smoothly. Inevitably, issues arise during any festival, and Ultra is no exception. Dierson credits the entire production crew beginning with the TAG team, including Lead Kevin Mignone, and Crew Chief Russ Felton for contributing to the festival’s success. Also coming in for praise were VJ/Technical Liaison, Grant Davis; FOH Lighting Tech Lead, John Flanagan; FOH Video Technical Lead, John Volpe; audio lead, Neil Rosenstock; SFX Lead, Luis Torez; and Stage Manager, Ash Ali.
“The collaboration was even more special this year,” said Dierson. “It was Ultra Music Festival’s 25th anniversary, and the sheer positivity that our crew and every guest team brought in was amazing. The guest teams are usually very good to work with but there was just something a little different about this year in that everyone simply had an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward whatever challenges arose. It was really great –and just made the entire process that much more enjoyable.”
Further information about CHAUVET Professional: www.chauvetprofessional.com
