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Impression Turns Orange to Green at Roskilde

The 2009 edition of the famous Roskilde Festival took place in the Danish town of the same name recently, with an attendance of 65,000 people, and bands such as Coldplay, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Oasis, Pet Shop Boys and Faith No More all appearing over the course of the four-day event.

Danish based Seelite supplied the lighting systems for multiple stages, including the main Orange stage which plays host to the biggest bands appearing. At the helm of lighting operations for Seelite is lighting designer Lars Nissen.

Lars had already been looking at LED based fixtures for various areas of his work and this tied in with a new initiative taken by the festival organisers, Green Footsteps, calling for cutbacks in power usage on all stages - amongst many other initiatives.

"I needed something that was bright and efficient but didn't compromise on performance," commented Lars. Thus a total of 70 regular Impressions and 24 Impression XL's, manufactured by GLP, featured in the design concept.

Lars chose to place Impression units right across the front of the stage - from the outer edge of one PA tower, all the way to the outer edge of the other. These were then supported by additional fixtures at the top of the PA towers and in the roof above each of the front of house mix positions. This was designed for audience lighting and to bring the stage out into the enormous crowds that flocked in for the bigger name bands. The XL fixtures, which are in Lars' words, "Retinally damaging bright!" were part of the onstage lighting rig.

The majority of the Impression fixtures came from Seelite's own rental stock with supplementary units supplied from AED Rent in Belgium.

With this being a European festival - and bearing in mind the footlight concept that Lars had thought up - it was necessary to add some protection for the inevitable rain storms that would arrive. With help from GLP, protection domes and a new mounting bracket were constructed and shipped within just a few weeks, and these gave the fixtures all the protection they would ever need.

With the position they had at the front of the stage, it was important for Lars to choose a fixture with as low a profile as possible and that would not be an eyesore to either the audience, the cameras or the artists. "Not only did the Impression achieve this, but the protection domes also made sure they just looked cool and would keep on working," said Lars.

The opening line up on Thursday night featured a set by leading Danish DJ, Trentemoller. Wanting to pull him out into the audience, Lars designed a catwalk leading out to the performance area, and again featuring the Impression fixtures lining the sides. "As the catwalk was only in use on Thursday night and then removed for the rest of the festival, we wanted a fixture that was also going to be fast to de-rig and then re-rig in its new location. As the Impression has no base to it and weighs so little, it was able to fulfil all our requirements in this area too," added Lars.

Four days of operation in a dust covered festival environment is a good testing ground for any fixture. Mikkel Bach Nielsen was manning the front of house consoles for the third year running, "The units worked flawlessly during the whole festival - we never had to touch any of them," confirmed Mikkel, adding "I think the XL's impressed all the LD's that came along. Most of them knew the Impression, but not the XL's, and they are bright enough that even the daytime bands were using them."

When the electrical meters were read at the end of the festival, power consumption on the Orange stage was just one fifth of what it has been in previous years, brought about by the amount of LED utilised in Lars' design.

In picture: the Impressions, showing the protection domes - and in operation.

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Impression Turns Orange to Green at Roskilde

11th August 2009

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