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Martin at The Shrewsbury Folk Festival
The Shrewsbury Folk Festival has been growing from strength to strength. From its humble beginnings as the Bridgenorth Folk Festival, it has attracted more and more people each year who come to come to soak up the array of folk music on offer.
Tim Soden, the technical site manager, explains that although Shrewsbury is a folk festival there is a marked diversity in the music, which requires a versatile lighting rig to cater for the different acts. “The lighting on both stages has to be subtle enough to light traditional folk groups, but also have the dynamics to satisfy the likes of The Peatbog Fairies and Salsa Celtica who fall into the Folk Rock genre. During the daytime concerts many of the bands simply require coloured washes but the evening headline acts, who often bring their own LDs, want the tools to provide a suitable lightshow. It is the flexibility of a moving light rig that provides this solution.
“For the main stage I specified MAC 700s and MAC 250 Washes, with the need for long subtle colour changes the units simply had to have full CMY colour mixing,” continues Tim. “They also had to be fast, quiet and have good optics. There is nothing comparable to either of these units from other manufacturers with a similar weight, size and price. For the more rocky lighting the MAC 700s provide some fantastic rotating and static gobos and a fast shutter and iris. The ease of changing rotating gobos is also an advantage – I have custom full colour glass Shrewsbury Folk Festival gobos to fit into each MAC 700. I only have three days to set this event up so this ease, along with the weight and size of the units mean I can set up a relatively large lighting rig in a short timeframe.
“The MAC 250s and MAC 700s work well alongside each other. Colour mixing is easy and I can grab both units and dial in the colour with no need to tweak one or the other to make them match up. The MAC 700’s zoom and iris give an incredible range of beam sizes, perfect for everything from picking up artists in specials to pencil beam work through haze. The variable frost in the MAC 250’s was useful for when I didn’t want such a tight beam through the haze. And I think the built in strobe and random strobe effects are excellent compared to other manufacturer’s products.
“The lights performed superbly without a single fault; not only is this down to the quality of the units but also the preparation by Essential. In fact I didn’t have to reset a single unit during show time for the entire four days of the festival.
“All the lighting equipment was supplied by Essential, this is the second year I have used them and I can’t imagine ever turning elsewhere. The standard of their prep and the condition of the kit is spot on.”
Stephen Craggs from Essential Lighting commented: “Essential is delighted to be involved with the festival as it keeps going from strength to strength. 2007 was a key year for the event with more acts and a new venue. We are glad that the quality of the Martin Equipment combined with Essential Lighting’s preparation, service and Tim’s design ensured a great show.”
16th October 2007
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