At the 2023 Bonnaroo Music Festival, 4Wall and ACT Entertainment debuted their ‘Pre Vis and Chill’ experience at The Other Stage. This previs production trailer was set up stage left of the stage. It offered incoming Lighting Designers the chance to relax in an air-conditioned room and update their show files on the included MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size console and WYSIWYG suite.
Incoming LDs were not only given an incredible technical advantage, but more importantly, it allowed them to spend quality time together and unwind from constantly being on the road, which was a refreshing experience.
Fast forward to New Year’s Day 2025, and Sydney’s Domain once again hosted Field Day with Chase & Status headlining. This year, LDs on the festival lineup were offered a similar experience with Darcy Cook of Tourlights in charge of creating a previs suite.
“They offer onsite previs spaces quite a lot in the US now, and I believe that now is a good opportunity for Australia to follow suit,” commented Darcy. “I got approached by the festival to provide a previs suite for the headline act’s production team. We created a virtually realistic render of the space for their team to come and update their showfiles.”
An onsite previs suite has many advantages; in particular, it minimises guest LDs coming and going to get time on the lighting rig during changeovers.
“There’s a huge benefit to it, especially if it’s a more intricate rig,” added Darcy. “They can plan more accordingly and just have more play time.”
Darcy provided the festival with his recently purchased MA Lighting grandMA3 full size, Depence R3 pre-visualisation software and Luminex networking to connect it all together. Darcy’s MA3 full size joins his MA3 fleet which includes a light and Compact XT.
“The MA3 full size offers an increased speed of programming; having that extra screen and a couple of extra faders really makes for a more convenient desk layout which is cruicial in a fast paced programming environment.” remarked Darcy. “I’ve been running MA3 mode since my first MA3 purchase back in 2023 and I have never looked back. All the operators at Field Day were MA3 across the board, which was exciting to see.”
During the festival, Darcy was on hand to assist the incoming LD’s to ensure their showfile worked flawlessly across the lighting system.
“It’s making sure that it’s correct to what’s in real life,” he added. “So, fixtures are moving in the correct direction, are in the right mode, and everything’s working as expected. There’s a bit of communication between the festival production team and myself in making sure that any inconsistancies are all smoothed over and that it’s a seamless transition. I think it has huge benefits, and I’d love to see more festivals implementing this, especially the larger multi-stage or multi-day festivals.”
At the same time as purchasing his MA3 full size, Darcy acquired a series of Luminex networking equipment including GigaCore 16XT, Luminode12 and Luminode 4.
“LumiNode 4 is more targeted for spread out site lighting data distribution where you just need a few universes here and there whilst our Gigacore and Luminode 12 stage racks are more destined to enable optical fibre links between FOH and the Stage to handle DMX distribution for larger lighting systems,” he said. “Everything has a redundancy in mind. Each Rack has an oversized UPS in it, so in the event of a circuit or a phase trip that would otherwise cut power to lighting nodes consequently disabling a large portion, if not all of a lighting rig, the stress tests have demonstrated up to 8 hours of battery time on the UPS devices before it’s time to start panicking.”
The technical capabilities offered by Field Day’s previs suite were second to none; however, Darcy believes improvements could be made – in the form of a coffee machine, bar and lounges!
