More details form LarMac Live (www.larmaclive.com):
Creamfields formed part of LarMac’s busy summer of nine outdoor festivals including Bestival, Hyde Park’s Barclaycard British Summer Time and Field Day.
The show, with a loyal 60,000 crowd and artists including Tiesto, Avicii, The Prodigy and David Guetta, featured 11 stages including a monstrous 65m wide structure as the home to the show’s South Stage.
“Creamfields has always been about impact and hitting the crowd between the eyes with a show. 2013 was no exception, with Cream going to the next level of production with the expansion of the South Stage along with setting light to near on a ton of raw explosives across the SFX packages on each stage” said Greenway.
The show was formed of two outdoor stages (North and South) and 9 tented arenas, allowing the show to go on until the early hours.
Colour Sound Experiment and Britannia Row once again provided sound and lights on the two outdoor stages and XL Video supplied the mast majority of near-on 1300 square metres of LED screen across the festival site.
With over 350 fixtures on South Stage alone, Coloursound were led by Crew Chief Jon Ricketts.
Both outdoor stages featured oversized IMAG portrait screens, with south having run-off screens across its 19m wide wings.
Liverpool based Adlib supported LarMac with design and carried on the delivery of the Anjunabeats/Cream, Skream & Benga/Super You & Me and Annie Mac/Speaker Box arenas – all headed up by Pete Abraham and on-site by Chris Neary.
Another LarMac regular, Manchester’s Audile handles Pryda/M-Nus while also developing an ‘in the round’ staging concept for Pete Tong/Nation.
Blackburn’s HSL were back at Creamfields this year providing lighting and rigging in Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso’s arena, alongside Britannia Row on audio.
UK Effects, who work with Cream at their supplied full production in the new Toolroom/Goodgrief venue.
Greenway continued ‘The challenge with a show like this is keeping it different for the audience. We are constantly trying to re-think how we design stages, and off the back of that found ourselves doing full production changeovers on 5 of the stages during the closed period of 04:00 and 11:00 on the Sunday morning. DJ’s travel light and so pressure is on us to interesting visual shows happen’.
To that end, Greenway worked collaboratively with each supplier to ensure each tent had it’s own personality and character by creating a series of tent specific designs and video configurations.
Friday night saw the return of Creamfields’ Silent Disco night with 27,000 festival goes embracing the concept of a headphone-delivered show in 4 of the big top structures.
For the first time the show was broadcast live online by Amsterdam’s Corrino Media Group, with live stream and highlights shown on Creamfields.com and YouTube.com.
Staging was once again supplied by Star Events Group, and risers from Wakefield’s LS Live. DJ gear was supplied by Studiocare.
Special Effects are increasingly crucial to dance events and BPM had responsibility for all SFX (including on stage, aerial, and laser provision) with a team of around 50 technicians across the event.
As a new addition this year, LarMac worked with Coloursound and SFX company BPM to develop SFX towers that sit in the audience areas and quite literally bring the show to the crowds feet; with 4 towers at each stage location, each laden with Sharpys, Atomic Strobes and an array of lasers and SFX.
