Autumn Projects 2022
Mote Park - Maidstone
Mote Park, Maidstone is a regular site for festivals and events throughout the season. It makes sense that RASE Productions supplies most of these events, given its strategic position and unrivalled hire stock locally.
The challenge during the cooler and often much wetter months of the season is maintaining that festival feel when the sunshine is afraid to show its face.
Running from September to October, a series of brands host events within the same site and same set of Big Top or King Top structures. The promotor needs a setup that can be customised to match the artists and acts performing each week, but also reduce the labour costs associated with any implemented changes.
RASE opted to install a self-climbing truss grid, based around the Eurotruss HD34 tower system. The grid was constructed from the Eurotruss HD44 general purpose 40cm trussing which offers impressive weight loadings when compared to other well known brands on the market.
Initially, PA wings were constructed using the same self-climbing truss grid system. Due to the position of the towers in relation to the tents sloping roof, the tower height had to be limited.
Inevitably the capacity of the events increased as the brand popularity grew so larger speaker arrays flown higher above the floor were a must to achieve the desired crowd coverage. RASE opted to deploy two Layher PA towers constructed as far forward as possible without encroaching into the audience area, achieving a 7.75m pick point height.
In combination with the now larger line array PA system, is a larger cardioid sub array. 5 banks of subwoofers were arranged along the front of the stage and time aligned to increase the width of coverage in the audience area, whilst maintaining a cardioid response pattern to lower stage noise and crucially reduce the disturbance to neighbouring sensitive noise receptors. (Domestic properties that boarder the park).
This approach proved successful and allowed for multiple weekends of shows, with varying genres of music that didn’t once breach the licence conditions in terms of offsite noise levels. Punters were none the wise that strict noise limits were in place, and the local residents were spared of excessively noisy back gardens 2-3 days in a row.
As ever, running the sound was the famed Allen & Heath dLive series, with an S7000 console at front of house, and an S5000 console side of stage. RASE have opted to run the dLive series of sound desks due to their incredible power, intuitive design and crucially, their reliability. Allen & Heath have done a superb job of creating an easy-to-understand system architecture that reduces prep and setup time.
Running the lighting was a staple in the live events world, an Avolites Tiger Touch ii. Set-up to trigger video wall effects at the same time as lighting states, this console makes for a superbly power and flexible control surface in a compact enclosure! The lighting rig was a mixture of Prolights, Robe, Luxibel, Showtec and Chauvet Fixtures.
In all, 28 moving head fixtures were squeezed onto the rig, accompanied by a range of LED effects, including the impressively bright Luxibel B-Blinded 2 cell Blinders. The Luxibel B-Blinded Blinder has some of the best tungsten emulation for an LED fixture on the market today. They’re responsive, flexible and scalable, meaning a 2 cell blinder can be connected to other 2 cell blinders using Luxibels intuitive rigging system to create 6, 8 or even 20 unit blinders. With it’s IPX4 rating, it’s suitable for all weather use too!
In all, the wide variety of lighting fixtures and ideally suited PA system, coupled with the flexibility that a Layher and a ground supported truss rig offer, each of the Autumn season events appeared unique while making use of the same core components. The result? A flexible set-up that met the needs of each of the event types, whilst minimising any changes needed in-between the events.
