QUINCY, WA – The Sasquatch! Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater celebrated its 15th year with headlining sets from Disclosure, Major Lazer, The Cure (pictured here), Sufjan Stevens (pictured below), and Florence and the Machine. Stageworks Seattle provided lighting design and production on the main stage. The flown lighting rig was used by almost all of the headlining bands with minimal augmentation. The rig featured Martin MAC Viper Wash DX, Viper Profiles, Elation Platinum Beams, LED strobes, and 93,600 watts of DWE blinders. The gear was provided by Christie Lites’ Seattle office.
More details from Stageworks (www.stageworks.net):
Lighting designer Jeremy Roth, who has been the LD for this stage since 2010, explains his approach to festival design. Roth says “I’ve learned a lot about festival design over the years as both a festival LD and a touring LD. I have an appreciation for design elements in a festival rig that make it easy for a touring LD to come in with a programmed show and painlessly clone it on to the rig. I’ve been in plenty of situations at other festivals and been challenged by odd fixture placements and orientations, bad or missing paperwork, strange truss configurations, bad angles, and the overzealous addition of too many different types of fixtures. That being said, I think there is certainly a way to have a unique design that stands out from just using linear trusses while maintaining a high level of usability for the touring LDs.”
Sasquatch Festival has featured many different unique truss configurations over the years. This year’s design featured a mirrored layout of arcs. The upstage and downstage arc spanned the stage left to right while the six midstage arcs spanned the stage running upstage to downstage. Roth explains, “Even though the truss structure and fixtures were broken up into many arcs, the fixture layout across all of the arcs was still in a linear fashion from left to right in rows of six, eight or twelve.”
Roth explained his thoughts on creating a festival rig that works for both daytime and nighttime looks. “I always try to include at least one or two fixture types that will read well for the daytime. You really can’t go wrong with lots of tungsten DWE blinders. As many designers who have been through Sasquatch can attest, we never lack in that department. Day or night, nearly 100,000 watts of bumping and chasing is going to look great. If budget allows, I also like to have a crowd facing LED element as a counterpoint to the tungsten blinders. Finding complimentary effects for the two systems works great and gives the people stuck with daytime sets something to play with that will look big and connect with the crowd, especially at the Gorge where the scale of the stage and natural backdrop is immense. I especially enjoy the grins I get from the touring LDs the first time they bring up the fader with all of the blinders. It’s a massive look.”
Gear:
18x Mac Viper Wash DX
20x Mac Viper Profile
23x Platinum Beam 5R
27x Christie Lites LED Strobe
36x Two Light Blinder
18x Four Light Blinder
6x Radiance Hazers
6x DF-50 Hazers
1x GrandMA2 Full
1x GrandMA2 Lite
Crew:
Lighting Designer: Jeremy Roth, Simon Clark
Master Electrician: Justin “Jiggy” Dunlap
Lighting Crew Chief: Rhiannon Betts
Production Manager: Chris Eberle
Head Rigger: Travis Medley
Christie Lites: Michael Ferguson
