Boomtown Fair: 11th Chapter

BOOMTOWN FAIR: 11TH CHAPTER

The festival embarks on the latest chapter of its wildly idiosyncratic narrative, as TPi’s Jacob Waite discovers…

Crowned by festival goers as a field of unity, creativity and freedom - heading into its 11th Chapter - Boomtown Fair fused a diverse line-up of underground and global music with breath-taking set design, immersive theatre and performance to create a living, breathing, fictitious city. To truly understand the multi-layered experience of Boomtown, TPi met the production crew battling the challenging outdoor elements to provide a backdrop to the untold stories of festival revellers.

Production Manager Robin Collings vendors of choice comprised Video Illusions, PRG, Laser Grafix, Aardvark FX, AF Live, Audio Feed, Coreworks, Phixion and Nitelites.

NUCLEUS STAGE At the heart of AREA 404, a brand-new structure emerged. At its core, a glowing orb made up of Video Illusions VI-L6 LED panels pulsed and flashed at the epicentre of the advanced performance space. “The aesthetic of each stage plays its part in the narrative of Boomtown,” stated Nucleus Production Manager, Zoe Hodge. “That’s what sets this festival apart from a ‘run of the mill’ corporate event. A lot of money has been spent by the festival on creative, a huge part of the Boomtown story starts with the build and the elaborate set design.”

Despite its vast and monolithic nature, the construction of the Nucleus stage under the guidance of Build Manager, Ben Pickering, was relatively “straightforward” according to Hodge. The structure was created by Coreworks, while Belgium-based Phixion, known for its impressive collaboration with Tomorrowland, was brought on to devise the set design. “We’ve brought together capable and creative contractors to make this possible,” Hodge explained.

The main scaffolding structure was built with approximately 120-tonnes of scaffolding material by Coreworks in addition to FOH, field delay towers and main PA hangs. All of which were constructed with a Layher Allround scaffolding system, while the main PA structures were built from Coresteel towers. Coreworks was involved in creating site infrastructure such as entrance gates, signage and routing at the check-in areas. Approximately 80-tonnes of scaffolding material was built up across two areas of the site

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PRODUCTION PROFILE

within two weeks, by seven Coreworkers and 10 locals.

As well as providing sitewide resources, Video Illusions provided all video production and lighting fixtures to the Nucleus – with two-tonnes of video screen, it was up to David Whiteoak and VI team to devise the rigging points required for to make the vision of Phixon vision become a reality. A total of 200sqm of VI-L6 panels were fitted on the stage with custom content created and customised to correspond with the storyline of Boomtown. “It’s a very robust product which catches the light well and is a lot smoother than other LED panels on the market,” Whiteoak explained.

Over 300 lighting fixtures were deployed on the Nucleus stage. A total of 40 Prolights Panorama IP Beams, 64 SGM G4s, 58 P5s and 12 P10s, 36 Colorado Solo 1 IP pars, 56 Linear 1m IP Rated Batons, 12 1kw floods as well as 2, 4 and 8 cells made up the entirely IP rated lighting rig.

He believed the most refreshing part of the festival was being given “creative control” to “suggest ideas” and see them come to fruition. “Most of the time you find video at festivals isn’t used in a particularly creative way,” he noted. “Boomtown affords us the freedom to be as creative with the technology as we like.”

Also working part of the VI team on Nucleus was Project Manager, Loz Poulton joined the conversation: “There aren’t many festivals out there at over 65,000 attendees with this level of detail,” he said. “Over the years, Boomtown has reaped the rewards of bigger structures, teams and production all while remaining fiercely independent.”

Despite the challenging outdoor conditions, the event continued. “To pull a successful festival out of the bag in these conditions is a reflection of their planning, contingency and the response measures in place,” Poulton stated.

With high winds, the VI team travelled sitewide to ensure that each deployment of LED was installed safely and securely. Additionally, the team fit monitors anemometers at the top of the Nucleus structure to “keep an eye” on the wind. “If the wind gets above a certain level, then the stage is evacuated and everyone goes to the bar,” Whiteoak assured. “Thankfully, we haven’t got to that point yet but accommodating what might happen prepares us for all eventualities.”

All of the Nucleus stage visuals were under control with two of Gaia Novas Resolume Arena 6 media servers running an 11k canvas . “We chose to use Resolume 6 as all our VJs are Resolume users for freestyle VJing,” Whiteoak said. “We sent the full canvas to the new Ai Q3 media server via DVI on the capture to control the new Synergy system, where the video colours are fed to the lighting fixtures and take full control.”

LD Paul controlled the lighting fixtures from an Avolites Arena console and a back-up but could at any point let the video content control the colours and intensity. The LD worked with Video Illusions on this project since the introduction of Sector 6 a few years ago. “It made sense to keep the same legends rolling in to Nucleus to smash the Temple Valley of Boomtown for the fourth year in a row,” Whiteoak shared.

Taking into account the sheer size of the structure and its exposure to the outdoor elements, the LD made sure the architecture was, “first and foremost, well lit.” He utilised the capabilities of architectural LED IP fixtures such as SGM P-5s and Q-7s. For the big beam and wash looks, Deville purposed Prolights Panorama IP Airbeams supplied by Wolf Lighting and SGM G-4 Wash/Beams. The control system consisted of an Avolites Ai Q3 media server. The Ai Q3 server was fed by the Resolume Arena 6 servers or “live control” server rack and in turn fed video over NDI streams to the Arena console.

The console output was then routed to the Avolites Titan Net Processors (TNPs) and Titan Net Switch (TNS) to feed data to the lighting rig to control the 30 universes of lighting fixtures. “This provided a system that was equally able to be used for instant response, live lighting and video busking as well as the fully timecoded Nucleus Spectacular show which was all choreographed and performed by the Invisible Circus guys,” said Arena 6 System Tech, Alex Buckley, who joined Tom Wall , Dan Shutt and VJ

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