Since incoming bands have little to no time to work on the actual stage before their artists perform at a festival, having a previz suite is important. A couple of months prior to the Rock in Rio show in Lisbon, Portugal, I received the initial lighting plot from the main stage programmer, Tobias Broecking, and began creating the ESP Vision model to be used for pre-programming. Once I arrived onsite, I worked with the Vectorworks team who also supported the studio to check all physical orientations of the fixtures against the actual lighting rig to make sure that they matched the real world. We made final adjustments, and within 24 hours of arriving onsite, we had our first LD arrive. Weeks out from the show, I sent out the patching paperwork to all of the LDs, and I passed on updates as they came to me. Once an LD arrived onsite, I confirmed with them all final changes while also making sure they had the correct console profiles for fixtures not found in their libraries (like the PRG Icon Beam). Some LDs brought their own consoles, while others used the existing console in the suite. For those who brought their own, I would also always try to send them the necessary network settings so they could configure their consoles ahead of time.
—Vickie Claiborne, from “Focus on Festivals,” PLSN, Sept. 2016 page 60.
