Avolites Titan and Ai Celebrate a "Fineline" Festivals Year

Bristol-based entertainment lighting hire and event production specialist Fineline Lighting is celebrating an amazing 2015 using Avolites Titan consoles, dimmers, Ai servers, and TitanNet Processors on some of Europe's biggest festivals.

More than 17,000 people flocked to Devon's Somersault Festival in July for a five-day musical extravaganza. Fineline provided lighting for four main music performance areas at the festival, including the 15m wide Main Stage.

The production lighting rig was designed by Fineline's Stuart England, and based around the requirements of the various headliners, an eclectic and interesting line up of Bombay Bicycle Club, Laura Marlin, and The Staves. "The house lighting desk was an Avolites Sapphire Touch and all the dimming was Avolites," says England.

At Cornwall's Eden Project, Fineline provided the production lighting for the 2015 Eden Sessions -- seven high profile concerts with a diverse line up including Elton John, Paolo Nutini, Paloma Faith, Motorhead, The Stranglers, Spandau Ballet, and Ben Howard.

With a team led by Fineline's Rob Sangwell, another Avolites Sapphire Touch was used as the house console, with all Avolites dimming and DMX buffering.

During the Glastonbury Festival, Fineline Lighting, which has been closely involved with Glastonbury over the last 24 years, supplied lighting equipment including a wealth of Avolites consoles and dimming racks for the Acoustic, Astrolabe Theatre, Cabaret and Circus venues, as well as Silver Hayes' Wow Stage.

Designed by Sangwell and England, the Acoustic stage featured performers such as The Proclaimers and the Moody Blues, with control coming from an Avolites Tiger Touch II plus wing, and ART2000 dimmers powering the generics.

The Astrolabe Theatre featured a line-up of performers spanning dance and physical theatre. Lighting was handled by Hal Himsworth, with a Pearl Expert Pro providing control, plus ART2000 dimming throughout. Dimmers were also used in the Cabaret tent with Wingnut controlling lighting.

Heading overseas, Fineline also specified Avolites Sapphire Touch consoles for Croatia's Dimensions Festival. "This was a no-brainer," says England. "With the need to control lighting, video, and LED more was better -- the number of faders allowed for more options and easy control of it all in a busking situation. The desks were set up in multi-user mode allowing LD Nic Ayres control off the entire rig and Will Dale to manage the LED and Video from a tech point and also back up."

Pixel Mapping featured heavily on the Dimensions festival - 2 x TNPs were used to expand the DMX outputs from the Sapphire Touch consoles to allow full control of the 65m LED tape spread over 13 universes. This was laid out in four triangles getting smaller as they went further upstage.

In addition, Fineline specified an Avolites Infinity EX8 server, to "create an immersive lighting and video package," says England. "They wanted to surround the crowd with lights and video creating a continuous effect." The EX8 was chosen to backup Fineline's own EX4, allowing control of the 40m2 of video laid out in 4 x 2m wide by 10m high towers.

Also in Croatia, Fineline supplied the Outlook Festival with yet more Avolites equipment. 2x Sapphire Touch consoles running in multi user/backup mode controlled 48 ways of Avolites dimming, an EX4 media server, and 48 moving lights using Avolites DMX buffers. 60m2 of video was spread across the stage hung in multiple columns of various sizes.

"The Ai EX4 was a breeze to map the video on to so many various sized columns," England says. "Different layers were set up to allow control of selected screens to add an extra depth to the video."

Fineline celebrated its 25th year in 2015. It was founded by Darren Wring in 1990 as a lighting rental and touring company and expanded in 2004 to include a manufacturing facility for bespoke staging and scenic elements. Current MD Rob Sangwell joined in 2002 and managed the production lighting and rigging aspects of Fineline until 2011 when he purchased the company with a view to focusing more on the rigging and lighting production.

England says: "I really like Avolites kit and the company itself. They really get involved and listen to the end user. Fineline has always been a strong backer of Avo, and this just keeps growing. They're a nice bunch of people who are always there to help and when you do need support it's always there any time of the day.

"Kit wise, we, and our customers, find it very simple to use Avolites. With minimal training we can create something backed by a lot of power. I find all the layouts very easy and simple. We work our kit hard during the year and it just keeps going. The servers were bought because we liked them and again they are very simple to set up and use but very, very powerful.

"We look forward to working with Avolites in 2016!"