Popular trance festival Sunrise celebrated its 10th anniversary in style with more stages, artists, and production values at its beautiful waterside site of De Lilse Bergen near Lille, Belgium. Upping the ante on lighting was a brief that lighting designers Kristof Blancquaert and Mattijs van Looy Kristof of design studio KB Lighting were happy to deliver … lighting all six stages with the help of some Robe moving lights.
As a freelance LD, Kristof has been involved with lighting Sunrise for some time. He designed a high impact rig for this year’s Main stage which included 14 x Robe MegaPointes, 18 x Spiider LED wash beams, six T1 Profiles, 20 x T2 Profiles, 10 x Tetra2 moving LED battens together with blinders, strobes, and deco lights.
Eye-catching décor was designed by Roxxi, and the main stage video elements were also integrated with the scenography.
Kristof’s objective was to create cool and atmospheric lighting for the lively mix of DJs and live acts appearing here, for which he chose this combination of spots, washes, and multifunctional lighting fixtures.
“We needed versatile lights that were really fast, tough – as they routinely get used extremely hard – and that could give us lots of creative potential and different looks,” explained Kristof, adding, “As always, the challenge with electronic music shows is to keep the energy pumping and ensure you’re not repeating yourself!”
Lighting this type of environment takes plenty of imagination and some intensive programming, and all these Robe fixtures give multiple choices. A lot of the action is also happening in the daylight hours, so lights also needed to be able to make a difference then, stepping up a few levels as darkness fell and craziness ramped up!
The MegaPointes were used as beams and effects. MegaPointe is arguably the industry’s favourite light for achieving this goal, and they were positioned on the sides of the centre section of the stage above the set arches.
The T1 and T2 Profiles were used for key light. While not so much key’ing is needed for a single DJ set and especially for trance DJs who often prefer to operate in the shadows, these lights were also used as fillers and to illuminate specific areas of the stage and set.
Kristof appreciates the power of the colour mixing systems in both T-series luminaires and especially of the T2 Profiles, which were rigged along the stage wing trusses flanking the central stage section. They helped accentuate the width and scale of the stage area.
All the lights were used for flying out into the 10,000-audience arena and connecting them with the music action.
The Spiiders were rigged along the top of the band stage – centre section – and the Tetra2s were there as well, upstage on the deck. Kristof notes that these two fixture types are a great complement to one another in terms of colours and pixel effects.
Kristof has been using Robe products for many years and specifies the brand frequently for all his dance music projects. “They are bright, dynamic and don’t break, and are among my favourite brands for this type of work.”
Main Stage lighting was operated by Kevin Cornelis using a grandMA3 console. In addition to keeping everything looking fresh and different between the artists, finding the right balance between lighting and video is always another important task for the production lighting design.
The Hardstyle stage also featured Robe movers with 24 x Pointes plus strobes, blinders, and deco lights, with the 24 Pointes distributed over five towers. Structures were designed by Robin Pelckmans and the stage had a steam punk vibe! Lighting was operated by Niels Baten using a ChamSys console.
The Dome stage was a tented venue with a similar technical set up to Hardstyle, again featuring 24 x Pointes for the moving lights, operated by Yannick Steves using a grandMA3.
The three smaller stages all had Robe LEDBeam 150s on their lighting rigs, their compact size, intensity and speed ideal for this application, “A great zoom, good punch, excellent colour mixing, plus you can use them anywhere!” concluded Kristof.
All lighting kit for the festival stages was supplied by leading Belgian lighting company, Lust for Live.
