Following many weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, the people of Athens, Texas had the opportunity to enjoy live music again last month when neighborhood event space Common Area Market hosted a community music festival called CAM Fest. Production for the event was supplied by fledgling local company Gain Stage Productions, including a lighting rig comprised exclusively of ADJ LED-powered fixtures.
For CAM Fest, Gain stage Productions founder Wes Akin set up a rig based around six Global Truss floor-standing totems that were positioned around Common Area Market’s temporary outdoor stage. He stood his four ADJ Vizi CMY300 hybrid moving head fixtures on top of four of these totems, which lined the back of the stage. This allowed for projection of GOBOs onto the corrugated metal side of the gin building, which forms the backdrop to the stage, as well as shooting beams out over the band into the audience.
“The full color mixing combined with that 300W LED engine makes the Vizi CMY300 a really great fixture,” comments Wes. “I have several buddies who use them, so I had seen them in action many times before I invested in my own. They are fast moving, have great output, the color mixing is very impressive and you can create loads of different effects with the two prisms and two GOBO wheels; I’m still learning all the different things I can make them do! I used them for CAM Fest, then for a dance recital two weeks later. Especially when I put them inside, in a room full of haze, those things just rock!”
Color washing was provided through a combination of ADJ 18P HEX LED pars and UB 12H LED bar fixtures. Two bars were mounted to the forward truss totems to wash the stage, while two more were positioned on the stage to illuminate the drum riser. Six of the pars were rigged to the rear truss totems to provide backlight, while a further two on the forward trusses provided front light for the stage.
“With their wide beam angle and bright output just those two fixtures were enough to light the whole stage,” states Wes. “In fact, I had to dim them down a little bit as they are so bright and I didn’t want to blind the performers! The 18P HEX is a really great fixture and that wide beam angle is very important to me as on a lot of the stages I do I don’t have much height, so being able to cover a wide area with a single fixture is very important to me. Then, when I do get the height, I can cover an even bigger area. So with the 16 of those fixtures that I own there’s not a stage I’m going to do that I can’t cover with an even wash. The edges on it are also good, they’re not real harsh, so they blend well together. The colors on it are great too, they mix well with the other fixtures I have, so I don’t need to spend time trying to get colors to match.”
Just prior to this event, Wes took delivery of the latest additions to his lighting inventory, a pair of ADJ Vizi Beam Z19 moving head washes. Naturally, he was keen to try them out at CAM Fest, where they were rigged to the two central truss totems. Each of these fixtures feature 19 x 20W quad color (RGBW) LEDs that are arranged into seven independent zones, allowing the creation of animated ‘eye candy’ effects.
“I’ve been very impressed by the Z19s from the day I took them out of the box. With the variable zoom and zone control you can make some really cool effects with them. I’d become so used to regular static pars as my wash lights, that are locked into wherever they are set, the ability to move the washes around depending on what the music is doing has been a revelation, it has really allowed for a new level of creativity. They are very cool fixtures and I totally intend to pick up more of them.”
Wes operated the rig from ADJ’s myDMX 3.0 software, which he finds to be a flexible control solution for a wide variety of different events and productions. Meanwhile, atmospherics were provided by an ADJ Entourage 1400W professional touring grade faze machine that is built into a durable flight case.
“The Entourage works great: lots of output, good control and quick warm up time,” enthuses Wes. “It also fires on demand, so there’s no delay between when I trigger it and when I actually start to get output. But the best thing is that it’s actually built into a flight case, that was a real game-changer. It makes it very easy to move around and also means that it’s always protected – in the trailer but also up there on stage.”
