TRING, UK – The first music festival to be promoted by an industry technical production company – Chilfest by Universal Event Productions (UEP) – was declared a success. UEP’s Steve Butcher – who came up with the idea to celebrate the company’s 15th birthday – was “completely blown away” with the response and the outcome. They supplied sound, lighting and video equipment and design for the two-day show.
More details from Universal Event Productions (www.u.e.p.co.uk):
The weather, the line-up and the atmosphere attracted up to 5,000 people the first day and sold out the second night at the 7,000-capacity Pendley Meadow in Tring, Hertfordshire, UK.
The pop themed Friday night was headlined by Little Mix, The Lovable Rogues, Heather Small and others, followed by the best of the ‘80s on Saturday with Tony Hadley, Rick Astley, Howard Jones, Midge Ure, Hazel O’Connor and Carol Decker.
“We set out to do something special to celebrate an important company landmark and simultaneously bring something back to the local community,” said Butcher.
Chilfest consumed copious amounts of his energy in the last six months.
Working in the production industry, Butcher and his team not only had their own high standards to meet, the pressure was on to ensure that all the technical and stage management elements ran smoothly.
The low rise 15 meter wide Orbit stage supplied by Trust Events tucked neatly into the corner of the Pendley Meadow site inconspicuously hugging the tree line.
UEP supplied all lighting equipment and visuals including the LED screen and cameras.
Ben Cash and Dave Amos of Flare Lighting – a London-based visual design duo – created an overall production design based on being flexible and dynamic to cover the range of acts playing and to accommodate last minute requests.
They sub hung two trusses from the Orbit which were shaped to the roof to maximize all the available height and ensure it looked neat, with a further upstage truss to fly five columns of UEP’s Glux 12 LED screen.
Cash’s moving light rig featured primarily Robe products including 12 new Robe Robin Pointe fixtures just bought by UEP, which arrived just in time for the show.
Robe Robin LEDBeam 100s were arranged in columns at the back between the strips of LED screen, together with Robe LEDWash 600s and 300s dotted all over the stage and with a few ColorSpot 1200E ATs.
In addition to these, six Clay Paky Shot Lights were used on the floor as fillers down both sides of the stage; 24 Showtech Sunstrips framed the LED columns and outlined the front truss; two Novalight High Grounds were placed at the downstage edges for big bold effects, and a couple of six lamp PAR bars were used for basic stage washes on the front truss.
Four Robert Juliat Korrigan follow spots were stationed at FOH.
Flare lighting provided the control package. A grandMA full size ran the lighting and a grandMA light triggered their Catalyst media server storing all the video content, which was compiled for the show by Dave Amos and created a vibrant backdrop for all the acts, most of which took the stage in daylight.
Two Glux 12 side screens were supplied by UEP together with six cameras – five Sonys and a GoPro remote behind the drum position for reverse shots. These were directed by UEP’s Mike Kane, who worked with Jay Martinez on the IMAG side of the video.
Andy Nurse shared stage managing duties with Mike Lindsey, James Fickling was the overall site manager and Charlotte Jackson took care of all the Health & Safety and dealt with the concessions.
Butcher thanks Rob Merrilees at Dry High Lighting and Darren Parker at DPL for supplying more lighting and equipment.
“We entertained 12,000 people over two nights,” Butcher says. “It was an unbelievable experience and quite an emotional one for me. My crew are incredible and I am truly humbled by the whole experience.”
