Festival Help

Why not using the festivaldesk for the festival rig, and do your own lighting at your own hog?

A few comments about doing festivals from a lighting system engineer, band operator, festival operator... And, not all are relevant to all festivals!

If you are the headline act
Try to advance with the festival lighting crew chief as much as possible.
If you can accomodate some of the things that make the lighting crew life harder or easier they will go the extra mile for you when you need it.
Get the patch sorted out by email and do whatever programming you can before you arrive.
Bring your console and plug it in for the show. This is usually better than trying to load & save shows and the festival operator will be able to do some blind programming so you will end up with more programming time.
Make sure the festival lighting crew know about the fixtures you are carrying and that you are bringing a console before you arrive.
A simple light plot for your fixtures, with fixture list, dmx addresses, power consumption and power connector type. Have a few printed copies ready to give the festival lighting crew.


If you aren't the headline act...
Not much point trying to patch the entire system to your console.
You will give the lighting crew a headache that means they aren't likely to be very helpful. This will be crucial to getting them to help patch in your fixtures you are carrying!
An accidental misspatch could mean you don't have the whole rig working for you.
You won't get time to program much, if anything.
Use your own console for your fixtures. Much easier than the lighting crew trying to find addresses and patch into their own universes, which may be getting full due to lots of LED etc.
The festival light operator will have some useable stuff in the house console, at least pallettes & a few position focuses. Be friendly as hell to him/her and they might show you the few funky things they have programmed that they'll let you use!
Most festivals will have a couple of spare dmx lines to FOH, which you can use to patch your own console to the fixtures you are carrying.
Use your own fixtures to make your show stand out, and to make it worthwhile carrying your console to FOH, and make the festival lighting crew think it was worth helping you!
A simple light plot for your fixtures, with fixture list, dmx address, power consumption and power connector type. Have a few printed copies ready to give the festival lighting crew.
Use standardised power and dmx connectors.
Keep your fixtures to a single universe where possible. Carry a dmx splitter if it makes more sense for laying cables.
It can be worth carrying your own dmx & power cables, especially for smaller festival sites. But... make them easily recogniseable as yours. A little bit of colored tape on both ends. Same on every cable!

Thanks so much Craig for the info!

We wont be headlining most festivals so just to be clear you're saying t use 2 consoles? Theirs for their fixtures and mine for mine?

Hi Reno,
Yes, festival console for festival rig, your console for the fixtures you are carrying.

Craig

depending on your situation it might be beneificial to you to program your show using XYZ coordinates. if you have a tour package that stays the same and you have time to pre program a show, programming your enitre show with XYZ makes it so at the show you focus all your lights to the 4 main points of the stage. USR USL DSR DSL. so no matter what size stage your on the desk will automatically adjust your show. this is a super fast focus. this will enable you to have more time to program the festival rig. I have not done a show yet where i couldnt get a patch and plot sheet ahead of time. at that point take your festival rig and come up with a few positions and color palletes that fit your show and then merge them into your show. use your fixtures for the majority of your "BANG" and fill in with the festival rig. its always good to have some festival flash and trash as well. all of this easy to do with FX engine. just remember to save your main show seperatly from each different festival. otherwise it gets cluttered. the good news is that in our industry most lights in festivals are pretty much standards, a few festivals in you will have pretty much used the majority of the most popular lights. then when you get a new festival with similar lights then you just merge 2 shows together. i hope this helps.

[QUOTE=mwrutland;54390]....XYZ coordinates...

FYI - XYZ is currently not available as a feature in Hog-3 software.
It was in the old H2 platform, but never implemented in H3.

Hope this helps. :)