Colour Sound at Secret Garden Party, UK

West London, UK based lighting rental company Colour Sound Experiment supplied site wide lighting, projection and AV for the Secret Garden Party festival -- one of the UK's original boutique style events, a celebration of music, arts, creativity and expressive fun. A cast of thousands is encouraged to engage with ideas and dreams for four days of imaginative freedom in a secret garden location in East Anglia near Huntingdon.

It was the first time that Colour Sound has worked for the event, and it was also the first outing for Colour Sound's new BT12 12mm pitch LED screen, a lightweight product that has been designed and manufactured exactly to their specs.

The investment is to cater for the growing demand for visual and scenic display surfaces that are becoming increasingly integrated into lighting designs. For Secret Garden, a total of 210 panels of the BT12 screen was supplied by Colour Sound to Immersive, the festival's site-wide video design team headed by Mark Calvert.

The Colour Sound crew of 14 was led on site by Jon Rickets and the project coordinated in the office by Steve Marley. They deployed three trucks of lighting and visuals gear around the site, covering the main stage and 32 other assorted stages, areas and spaces, all of which required various degrees of illumination.

They also worked closely with Secret Garden's production managers, Peter Tilling and James Brennon, which was "a great collaborative and highly rewarding experience," says Rickets.

A production lighting design was created for the main stage to satisfy all the headlining acts -- The Mystery Jets (Friday), Leftfield (Saturday) supported by Blondie, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (Sunday), Colour Sound also supplied full specials packages for Leftfield and Blondie.

The stage was a 59' orbit structure, below which five sub trusses were hung, some of which were hinged and shaped to the roof to maximize space.

The festival design utilized 16 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500 HPEs, six Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs, and 16 GLP 120 RZ Zoom LED washes for moving lights, along with 10 Martin Professional Atomic strobes, large quantities of two- and four-lite blinders and 12 Sunstrip Actives, all controlled through an Avolites Pearl Expert with a touch screen. A Chamsys MagicQ 300 was also supplied by Colour Sound, with Blondie the only act bringing in its own console, which was a grandMA light.

A major overnight changeover took place on the Friday for the Saturday to ensure that Leftfield had a completely unique look for their performance, which was the highlight of the weekend. On Friday, the screen was configured as one large center-stage surface flanked each side by two thin vertical columns. On Saturday, this was changed to three portrait formatted screens. For Sunday the screen changed again, together with some of the lighting, as both Immersive and the Secret Garden production were keen to have a different variation. Radically altering the screen was entirely practical due to its light weight and portability. It is a 61.5lbs per square meter and fastens together rapidly via a direct clipping system. Currently, it is housed in touring road cases, but Colour Sound will soon be installing it into custom touring frames -- once it's back in the warehouse long enough -- which will speed up this process up even more! The light weight also means it can be hung with a lot less rigging involved.

The Leftfield (LD Chris Steel) extras comprised four soft-ladders --installed in the gaps between the three screens, onto which were rigged an additional six Alpha Spot 1500 HPEs, four Atomics, six GLP 120 RZ Zooms and assorted blinders, and the MagicQ console was also used. For Blondie, Colour Sound added a 36 inch mirror ball and six Chroma-Q Color Force 72 LED battens, used for lighting white material drops in front of the LED screens and soft ladders.

A giant dragonfly - approximately 15' high and 30' long -- was built on a pontoon in the middle of the lake, and spectacularly ignited on Saturday night as part of the fireworks and pyro extravaganza, which is a centerpiece of the event. Underneath the dragonfly was a floating dance floor area, for which Colour Sound supplied wave and ripple effects and color-changing LEDs for the dragonfly eyes.

Other stages of note included Where the Wild Things Are, which was lit with six GLP RZ Zooms, seven Martin MAC Entours, and a scattering of PARs, controlled by an Avolites Tiger.

The Remix Stage featured eight Sunstrip Actives, six Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs, six ColorWash 575E ATs and four Robe ColorWash 700E ATs. Performances included an energetic set by The Whip, whose LD, Kesker McClure, was also working as one of the Colour Sound event crew.

Other places receiving imaginative lighting treatment included the Soul Fire restaurant, The Crossroads venue, Aspall's Folk Lodge, Teen Love, The Discussion Zone, and the Coliseum, an outdoor circus arena which was lit with 10 Studio Due MiniCities, two large exterior LED wash lights and six High End System Trackspots.

Says Rickets, "It was a fabulous event to work on in a very friendly atmosphere with people who really care enormously about aesthetics, presentation and the importance of offering high production values for the greater enjoyment of their audience."