Ed Warren could see that the fans in front of him were really tuned into the two Four Tet shows he lit in Brooklyn at the start of this summer. That was a given. Less certain though, was whether or not the people above the acclaimed British lighting designer, Ed Warren, had any idea what he or his famous client were doing. That’s because Four Tet and Warren were 100-feet below the long and very busy Kosciuszko Bridge (affectionately known as the “K Bridge”) when they were busy doing what they love – and are really good at. “I must admit, it was different doing a show underneath such a busy overpass,” said Warren. “We really couldn’t tell at all what was going on above us. I wonder if anyone above could tell what was going on with us below?”
Given the height and design of the much traversed (34,000 vehicles a day) bridge, that connects parts of Brooklyn and Queens, those passing overhead were oblivious to what Warren and his friends were up to down below in the recently opened K Bridge Park. Such a shame, since the two-day festival featured a brilliant mix of EDM music in all its glorious forms by Four Tet and twenty artists he selected to be a part of his curated event.
Warren lit Four Tet’s two main stage sets – one on Saturday late, the other Sunday afternoon into evening, using his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M Stadium Console. Shawn Bunch and Rishi Guinness ran the other shows on MagicQ MQ-80 Compact Lighting Consoles with Wings, while See Factor’s Alban Sardzinski handled production on the B stage. All the consoles at the festival, as well as the lighting rig, were supplied by See Factor, working with Highlt PDS (design and drafting studio) GreeNow (power and generators) Firehouse Productions (Flex one audio), and Gravity Productions (festival production management).
For the Four Tet show that he designed, Warren turned the park under the double-spanned bridge into kaleidoscopic wonderland of rapidly moving reflective light and gobo patterns right there in a converted industrial site at the border of two New York boroughs. As is his custom, Warren made mirror balls an integral part of this design. “We had four mirror balls positioned around the circular truss above the stage,” he said. “There were also four pillars holding up the bridge. We rigged circular trusses around them as well, so in total we had eight above the dancefloor and four above the stage.”
As for the gobo looks that were so exciting in his show, Warren noted: “I don’t often use them much, but they were a good way to break up the show a little. We called upon them at the more relaxed gentle parts of the set before it went hard again – ‘Recovery Gobos,’ if you will.”
In addition to the intuitive, user-friendly layout of his ChamSys console and its step-saving Timeline feature, Warren found the Group FX feature to be particularly important at Under The K Bridge. “I used a Show File from a previous Four Tet show with a not too dissimilar setup, so Group Cues and Group FX made changing the show to this configuration go very smoothly. Absolutely, without a doubt, with Group Cues, moving from one show to another has never been easier!”
Looking at the overall show, See Factor’s Alban Sardzinski said: “This was a very unique canvas to work with. It allowed some incredible looks to be created. The ability with ChamSys to busk fast and drive 90-pixel bars and lights without limitations was a big contributor the making this a special event for everyone.”
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