Firefly Festival Stuns with Bandit Lites

	Firefly Festival

Bandit Lites continued its summer of stellar festivals with a lighting package provided for a weekend in the woods at The Firefly Music Festival, and while the weather may have put a damper on last year's festivities, the elements cooperated this year to give the 90,000 attendees nothing but good vibes and great performances. Headliners for the June 16 - 19 event featured a wide variety of artists such as Mumford and Sons, Blink 182, Florence and The Machine, Death Cab for Cutie, and Kings of Leon.

The unique ethereal atmosphere for Firefly comes from the woodland surroundings, which boasted a hammock hangout area, draughts from Dog Fish Head Brewery, a Silent Disco amongst the foliage, and four stages of incredible tunes.

Bandit provided lighting for the Main, Lawn, Backyard, and Porch stages, where lighting looks had to pop during the daytime shows and compliment artists who utilize a touring festival system.

Bandit production director Dizzy Gosnell explained that he collaborated with the headliner designers for each night to get as close to their individual needs as possible, while making sure the budget, schedule, and space would fit across all facets.

"Firefly has become quite the 'go-to' festival for the east coast," said Gosnell. "This year had nearly three times the attendance of the first Firefly in 2012. With an always impressive array of bands and major headliners, it takes a lot of communication early in the year with the headline designers to make sure they are catered for. Working with Scott Cadwallader who was the overall show production manager for Lambda Productions is always a pleasure as he's so together and detail orientated, which is the way I like to work as well."

The Main Stage featured nearly a hundred fixtures including Philips Vari-Lite VL 3500 Washes, VL 3000 Spots, Bandit 5x5s, Clay Paky Sharpys, Elation Professional CuePix 2 Lite LED luminaires, 8-Lites, Par 64s, Lycian M2 Spots, and Martin by Harman MAC 2000 Beam kits.

Bandit also provided the Lawn Stage with its exclusive GRNLite Moving Washes and 8-Lites, Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes, VL 2500 Spots, and Clay Paky Sharpys. Additional fixtures for all four stages were Robe BMFLs, Clay Paky Mythos, Nitro 510s, and a grand total of eight MA Lighting grandMA 2 full size desks in use across all four stages.

Bandit crew onsite consisted of Teresa Fensler, Craig Richter, Sam Morgan, Chelsea Opdyke, Matt Dean, Maurice Weiss, Andrew Jacoby, and Kenny Mason. Nashville support came from project managers Jimmy Hatten and Matt King.