03.12.2014 | Halloween Goes EDM with Elation Rig at Fear Fest in Tucson
Creative BackStage of Phoenix turned to an Elation lighting and video package as a main element of their visual design for Fear Fest, Arizona’s ultimate Halloween EDM festival that took place November 1st at The Slaughterhouse in Tucson. Fear Fest combined high-energy dance music from featured DJ’s (Benny Benassi, Tavik, etc.) with the thrills of three different haunted houses, all in one entertaining, spooky-themed festival.
The Slaughterhouse is a well-known haunted house in Tucson and because the event was held on Halloween weekend Creative BackStage wanted to create a design that represented the ghoulishness of the holiday as well as the Fear Fest festival. “The idea was simple, to use LED video screens for eyes and a mouth with video images that would be of the fear kind with monster eyes and teeth or devilish eyes,” explains John Garberson, owner of Creative Backstage and lighting designer for the event. “We set up two 8x 8 Elation EVLED video screens to create the eyes and put a 12x 4 EVLED screen in front of the DJ for the mouth.” The 20mm pixel pitch EVLED 20IP LED video screen had all the elements required - tri color LEDs for a large array of color choices, 4000 Nits of brightness and a weatherproof IP65 rating.
John’s initial design on CAD came out over the top, he says, a setup that included a 30’ tall demon with horns using truss, video panels and lighting. But the budget didn’t allow for the more elaborate setup and John had to strip down the demon design into something that would fit the budget. “So we relied on video loops and design to bring out the evil-looking faces,” he says. “We added 10’ circle trusses for the eyes in front of the video panels and mapped them with circles and used a 30’ long truss giving the design a face outline.”
John outlined both trusses in Elation Flex LED tape so they would pop. “I also placed Cuepix Strips across the 30’ truss,” he says. “And we placed Cuepix Panels across the front truss for blinder effects and it also helped with the face look.” The rest of the lighting was made up of Elation Platinum Beam 5R moving heads and color-changing Opti LED pars. No Halloween event should go without fog and special effects so John incorporated Z-1520 RGB foggers, M-8 foggers and F5 Fazers from Antari along with CO2 jets and a confetti blaster.
This was Creative BackStage’s first time doing Fear Fest in Tucson although they’ve worked on similar projects in Tucson before such as the popular N9NE Fest. When choosing Elation John says that, “Service and support is number one. It does not matter how small or large the issue is, the Elation guys always come through to make it right. They are great and will get you the answers to anything you need right away and have proved time and time again that their gear is as good as or even better than products from the bigger players in the industry.”
John thanks TJ Watson, Chris Brodman and Michael Morse for their support on the event and James Simpson for lighting programming. He also thanks Jamie Rivera “for putting up with my crazy face design in finding and editing video loops and running visuals,” as well as the SouthWest Stage hands.
See videos at:
http://youtu.be/A734bDRhwNs?list=UUGs2sU3xZsUExkF1G8AnSqQ
http://youtu.be/asivlJM8q1A?list=UUGs2sU3xZsUExkF1G8AnSqQ
Elation Gear:
44 x EVLED 20IP
16 x Cuepix Strip
4 x Cuepix Panel
10 x Platinum Beam 5R
8 x Opti RGB
1 x eNode8 Pro
100 ft Flex LED Tape
____________________________________________________________________________
