Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Robe shines bright at Sziget 2023

Hungary’s Sziget Festival celebrated thirty years in 2023 earning its place as one of Europe’s largest, most popular and diverse music and cultural festivals which is staged annually in August on Óbudai-sziget (“Old Buda Island”), an 108-hectare island on the Danube just a stone’s throw from central Budapest.

Robe moving lights had a big presence this year across three major performance areas - the Main Stage, the massive FreeDome Tent and the DropYard rap stage - as well as on some of the other venues around the site that hosted over 1,000 performances on the “Island of Freedom” as it’s known for the duration.

Production lighting for the Main Stage was designed by Mark Kontra, part of the team from rental specialist Colossal which supplied all the lighting kit for this area. Kontra has been involved in some capacity with this stage and the festival for the last twelve years, and since 2015 has been the head of Main Stage lighting.

The Robe count here this year was over 160, with 42 Fortes, eight iFortes, 64 Pointes and 56 ColorStrobes. Four BMFL Spots running on four RoboSpot systems were available for those requesting it, which were Florence + the Machine and Lorde. Imagine Dragons brought in their own 7-way touring RoboSpot system complete with BMFL LTs.

The production rig is also designed to make overnight headliner programming sessions as smooth and seamless as possible. “We provide enough of everything”, states Kontra, “but also try and keep it simple so everyone can clone their show files without any hassle.”

They don’t usually offer a generic floor package for this stage, but for any artists needing one and not bringing in their own, it is built exactly to their individual specs. The initial stage lighting design is finalized and tweaked when all the main technical riders are in a couple of months ahead for the event.

One of the final elements of the design to take shape is the final truss positions which are established at the end stage to allow for the logistics and practicality of incorporating all the headliner’s rigging requirements.

The stage this year measured 24 meters wide by 15 deep with 15 meters of headroom expanded slightly higher from the 2022 event. A thrust extended out at the front to a B stage so artists could get amongst their fans. Most of the lighting was Robe fixtures, rigged on four main over-stage trusses plus another two wing trusses.

The Fortes were positioned in an 8-8-8 formation on the three upstage trusses with ten on the front truss, as requested by Mumford & Sons. The iFortes were on the PA wing trusses which were fully exposed positions. The Pointes were also deployed 8-8-8 in the upstage three trusses, 8 & 8 on the wing trusses and 8 & 8 on two mid-stage ladders. That same 88 format was repeated for the ColorStrobes.

David Guetta brought in one of the more complex floor packages (designed by the team at High Scream) which included his own LED screen part flown and partly ground supported immediately behind his DJ platform and in front of the 20 metre x 7 metre house LED screen at the back. This was supplemented by a left and right IMAG screen.

At FOH, two GrandMA3 full-size consoles and two GrandMA3 lights provided control running with five NPUs over a Luminex network. Colossal also provided a visualization suite on-site for anyone wanting to take advantage.

The Visual Europe Group (VEG) were the lighting, audio, and video equipment suppliers for this very large FreeDome Tent. They have one of the largest Robe rental inventories in Hungary, and Robe was once again prominent on the rig which was designed by Laszlo Szonyi, head of lighting at VEG’s Budapest office.

Szonyi used 42 BMFL Spots, 24 Tarrantulas and 24 MegaPointes plus some other lights. The BMFL Spots and MegaPointes were mainly on the upstage trusses and on some angled trusses in the upstage corners. The Tarrantulas were in these positions with ten units on the front truss which produced washes both in the audience and onstage. The other lights on the rig included blinders, strobes and LED PARs.

Also on the kit list were 24 Tetra2s and twelve MiniPointes which were requested by two of the acts, with all this run via a GrandMA3 full-size console.

The DropYard, an underground hip hop stage, features a semi-open tent, the stage located at the closed end and the FOH at the open end, with lighting co-ordinated by David Kovacs and the kit also supplied by Colossal. The production design for lighting was also completed by Mark Kontra.

DropYard hosted four live acts per evening and was used throughout the day for breakdancing workshops and other activities which also needed some lighting. Main stage lighting was rigged on a ground supported structure upstage and on this 24 Spiiders and 16 MiniPointes were deployed.

On the front truss were another twelve Spiiders, plus some blinders, with LED floods attached to the stages of the tented structure to help light the audience further back and cube LEDs on the front of the stage that also lit the audience. The front truss Spiiders were also used for DJ key light.

For control, there was a GrandMA3 light, and Kovacs and his colleague Mark Stiller operated for those acts not bringing their own LD.

(Photos: Louise Stickland/Paul Clarke)

www.robe.cz

© 1999 - 2024 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories