ROSKILDE, Denmark — The 2009 edition of the Roskilde festival took place in the Danish town of the same name during the first week of July with an attendance of 65,000 people and bands such as Coldplay, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Oasis, Pet Shop Boys and Faith No More all appearing over the course of the four day event. Denmark-based Seelite supplied the lighting systems for multiple stages, including the main Orange stage which plays host to the headliners. Seelite’s Lars Nissen was in charge of lighting operations.
Nissen had already been looking at LED based fixtures for various areas of his work and this tied in with a new initiative taken by the festival organizers, called Green Footsteps, calling for cutbacks in power usage on all stages — among other initiatives.
“I needed something that was bright and efficient but didn’t compromise on performance,” Nissen said. So, with his design this year, he brought in Impression LED moving head fixtures, manufactured by GLP in Germany — 70 of the regular Impression fixtures and 24 of the Impression XL fixtures.
Nissen put Impression units across the front of the stage, from the outer edge of one PA tower to the outer edge of the other. These were then supported by additional fixtures at the top of the PA towers and fixtures placed in the roof above each of the front of house mix positions for audience lighting and to bring the stage out into the enormous crowds that flocked into the bigger name bands. The XL fixtures — “rationally damaging bright,” in Nissen’s words — were part of the onstage lighting rig.
To protect the gear from rain, the crew worked with GLP to shield the exposed fixtures with protection domes. GLP also designed a new mounting bracket. With the position they had at the front of the stage, it was important for Nissen to choose a fixture with as low a profile as possible. “Not only did the Impression do this, but the protection domes too made sure they just looked cool and would keep on working,” Nissen said.
The opening lineup on Thursday night featured a set by leading Danish DJ, Trentemoller. Wanting to pull him out into the audience, Nissen designed a catwalk leading out to the performance area, and again featuring the Impression fixtures lining the sides.
“As the catwalk was only in use on Thursday night and then removed for the rest of the festival, we wanted a fixture that was also going to be fast to de-rig and then re-rig in its new location. As the Impression has no base to it and weighs so little, it was able to fulfill all our requirements in this area too,” Nissen said.
Mikkel Bach Nielsen, who was manning the front of house consoles for the third year running, noted that “the units worked flawlessly during the whole festival, we never had to touch any of them,” and added, “I think the XLs impressed all of the LDs that came along. Most of them knew the Impression, but not the XLs, and they are bright enough that even the daytime bands were using them.”
When the electrical meters were read at the end of the festival, power consumption on the Orange stage was just one fifth of what it has been in previous years, brought about by the amount of LED used in Nissen’ design.
For more information, please visit www.glp.de.
