Fineline Lighting Helps Love Save The Day

	Photo: Love Saves The Day

Bristol's "Love Saves The Day" Festival moved to the new, expanded location of Eastville Park this year dramatically increasing its capacity from the previous city center site, a move that allowed 27,000 music and fans to enjoy a superlative line-up and weekend of music and entertainment graced with the blazing sunshine beneath blue skies.

Locally-based lighting and visual specialist Fineline delivered lighting, video, and rigging for the three main stages.

Fineline managing director Rob Sangwell commented, "We were really excited to be involved again after supplying lighting and video to the main stage last year. It's great to see the festival move forward and it was a huge pleasure collaborating with production manager Tom Paine and everyone from organizers Team Love."

Production lighting and visuals designs for the three stages were created by Fineline's Wingnut based on the headliner's rider requirements and ensuring that there was a good general purpose lighting rig in place for all artists playing over the weekend.

This year the Main stage size was increased to a 15m Supernova structure from Serious from which the Fineline crew sub-hung three trusses loaded with a variety of lighting fixtures.

Twelve Robe Pointes positioned upstage were the main effects moving lights, rigged at staggered positions on four drop arms -- three units per arm -- for what the company called "great in-the-face looks."

These rows of Pointes flanked three central columns of Lighthouse R7 LED screen. Also on this truss were six 2-lite Moles and four bars of ACLs.

Hung on the offstage edges of the mid truss were two further drops of LED screen. Having these over two trusses added some proper depth to the stage. Also on the mid truss were 12 Robe LEDWashes for general stage coverage, plus another six 2-lites and four bars of ACLs.

The front truss facilitated all the key and front lighting with four lamp PAR bars, six ETC Source Four profiles and -- audience facing -- six 8-lites.

For control, two Avolites Tiger Touch II consoles at front-of-house enabled multi-user set-up to facilitate simultaneous programming on two consoles by two different operators ... which saved a lot of time. The main console also triggered the AI media server running video content, and the server was monitored -- and tweaked when necessary -- a by Stu England using another Tiger Touch located onstage in the dimmer area.

Other control infrastructure included a ChamSys R8 ArtNet node for the networking and Avo FD dimming.

Some bands rocked up with their own lighting designers, leaving Wingnut to add his magic touch to all the artists without a dedicated operator. "The rig was designed with plenty of flexibility," he comments, "So we certainly didn't run out of ideas or looks, and also kept all the guest lighting designers happy."

Stage Two was a single king-pin 40m Big Top marquee, so a very well balanced front truss was installed with the help of substantial bridling to keep it stable. The truss was loaded with two bars of six PARs, four Robe 600E Spots, and four 600E Washes.

Onstage, four 20cm trussing towers on floor bases provided the main lighting positions, two at 8' high and two at 6' high, and to give these a bit of idiosyncrasy ... they were angled at 10 degrees.

Each tower was rigged with four Miltec LED PARs, a bar of ACLs, a 2-lite, an Atomic strobe, and a Robe LEDBeam 100 on the top.

Fifteen panels of Lighthouse R7 LED screen were arranged in a large U-shape onstage, and for this stage, video content was supplied by Love Saves The Day.

For lighting control a Tiger Touch was run by Will Dale, who ensured that the mix of bands and DJs all received great looking shows.

Stage Four (DJ stage) was housed in another 40m single king-pin marquee, for which Fineline rigged a 6m front truss that was identical to that in Stage Two, and also installed a large spaceship set piece onstage, designed by the Love Saves The Day creative team, together with other scenic elements around the stage that transformed the tent into an intergalactic environment for the weekend.

The set was up-lit with Miltec LED battens, 10 Robe LEDBeam 100s, four Atomic strobes, along with 4-lite blinders scattered around the stage, up-lighting and blasting out into the crowd. The main design criteria for lighting was to make it vibrant, energized, and dancey.

Control was a ChamSys MagicQ100 desk, dimming was Avolites, and the lighting was operated by James Box.

Joining Wingnut, England, and the Fineline operators mentioned above were Ben de Sousa and Rachael Mule, a highly organized crew who worked quickly and efficiently on site to help deliver the largest and most successful Love Saves The Day to date.