Back in 1959, a Dayton, Ohio man named Ermal Fraze forgot to bring his can opener to a family picnic. Desperate to enjoy his favorite beverage on that hot day, he had to resort to opening a can of it on the bumper of his car. The messy and inelegant process left Fraze, an engineer by trade, convinced there had to be a better way to access liquid refreshment on the go. A few years later, he found one, when he patented the pop top can.
Today, some 59-years and untold billions of beverages later, the pop top can has become an integral part of everyday life, used to hold every conceivable sort of beverage, including (in recent years) an ever-widening choice of hard seltzers and premixed cocktails. Celebrating the latter on Sept. 10, was Canacopia, a one-day festival in Mesa, AZ, sponsored by Forty8 Live, dedicated to the appreciation of adult canned beverages.
The 3-10 pm event offered guests, all of whom had to be 21 and older, far more than the chance to enjoy a canned drink. There were also a yoga class, games, and exhibits, as well as nonstop live musical performances on a big stage headlined by multi-platinum, Grammy winner Zedd, and also featuring Evening Elephants, The Brook & The Bluff, among others. Supporting the headliner performance was a dynamic light show on a rig designed by Zedd’s LD Steven Hernandez, and built by Creative BackStage that featured 112 Chauvet Professional fixtures.
John Garberson of Creative BackStage, who spent months working with Forty8 Live and the Zedd team to bring the event to life, had a clear vision in mind when putting together the rig: It had to be bright enough to create bold looks even during daylight hours for opening acts, and intense enough to stand up to the large bright video wall that was a critical part of the headliner’s show.
“Looking back at the show and evaluating it in terms of our goals for the design, I have to say I was really happy with the way this setup worked for Zedd’s lighting and video team,” commented Garberson. “They did great work syncing the show using timecode. The lighting and video flowed great together to create a single visual experience. The Chauvet fixtures were nice and bright while working alongside the bright LED screens.”
Featured in the rig were eight Maverick Force S Spot, 40 Rogue R2 Beam, 40 Rogue R2 Wash, and 24 STRIKE Array 2 fixtures. These luminaires were drawn from Creative BackStage’s own inventory in addition to being supplied by LIT Lighting.
“We got great lighting support from LIT,” said Garberson. “It was a spectacular effort by our entire team: L1 James Simpson, L2 Casey Jones, Pro Production Services and AZ Event Support. We worked hard setting up over two very hot and wet days, but the end result was a killer.”
Part of the event’s impact came from its powerful and varied audience lighting, much of which emanated from the rig’s STRIKE Array 2 Blinder and Rogue R3 Beam fixtures. The warm white blinders were grouped in pairs, eight of which were flown on downstage truss, and two of which were on the scaffold towers. The high output Rogue R3 Beams were positioned throughout the rig on vertical and horizontal structures as well as on the deck.
By altering the audience lighting between cool and warm white light, the designers reflected different moods. The large center stage and two side stage video panels also got involved in audience lighting at times with breakout patterns that seemed to move out of the screens and into the crowd.
Frequent and dramatic aerial effects added another dimension to the show. The Force S Spot fixtures arranged on the deck in front of the main LED wall figured prominently in creating this look, while the R2 Wash units located throughout the rig filled the air with captivating color washes, some of which played off beautifully against the copious output of confetti cannons.
Captivated by these looks, visitors weren’t bothered much by the hot and wet weather. They were having too much fun being swept up by an iconic star’s stellar performance on stage, and enjoying some refreshing canned beverage varieties, most of which Ermal Fraze never could have imagined back in the day.
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