Robe moving lights were prominent on several major stages at Sziget festival this year, including the Bolt Night Stage supplied by Light Positive with some fixtures that were a brand-new investment; The Revolut Stage supplied by VEG Europe, and the Main Stage, supplied by Colossal.
Robe’s distributor AVL Trade organised an exclusive word-of-mouth backstage area and tech hub for all crew, creatives and others working BTS across the site, which included the Avostream mobile demo vehicle, a comprehensive merch cabin, naturally a bar and chilling zone under the trees, complete with nice loos adjacent to the Night Stage backstage village, which brought the buzz of artists coming and going.
Up to 60,000 festival fans attended each day, generating a fantastic, fun and positive atmosphere as everyone enjoyed the glorious sunshine.
AVL Trade’s Csaba Csanádi commented, “It was another great event for us in terms of networking, reconnecting with our industry friends and acquaintances and making new contacts, including visiting lighting directors and operators. It was excellent to see so many Robe products in use festival-wide, proving once again that iFORTE and other Robe favourites are a reliable go-to for festivals and outdoor events.”
Bolt Night Stage
Previously known as the Party Arena, this large – 10,000-capacity – tent is Sziget’s core for electronic music fans and revellers keen to rip up the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. hours, with a lineup featuring some of the genre’s greats, including Armin van Buuren, Steve Angello, Amelie Lens, Boris Brejcha and many more.
The Night Stage lighting design was created by Netherlands-based visual design specialist The Art of Light, led by Andre Beekmans. The company is well known for its innovative work especially in the electronic music genre and they also provided the production lighting design for the Colosseum Stage.
Overseeing The Art of Light’s work on site was Kasper Dijksterhuis, who created the plot, drawings and renders with Andre.
A major feature of TWOFIFTYK’s environmental design for this space was 14 automated ‘visual’ pods rigged with lighting and video elements, hung in the roof above the audience, which enabled the architecture of the space to be changed each day – and during each artist as required, offering a super dynamic performance experience.
Additional trusses ran the length and width of the ceiling area available for lighting, audioand video positions, and the onstage widescreen LED behind the DJ booth accentuated the epic yet fun feel of the space.
Dijksterhuis explained that when it came to lighting, they looked at the venue, the available rigging and weight loading, plus all the artists’ riders, and of course the scenography, then started populating it with lights.
Each of the moving pods contained 10 Robe LEDBeam 350s, with additional LEDBeam 350s also used as side key light for the DJ.
LEDBeam 350s were specifically picked for the moving pods as they are light in weight, anessential consideration for minimising slipping potential and ensuring stability when the pods were tipped at the more extreme angles. 20 Robe FORTES were positioned along the top of the upstage screen and on the trusses left and right of this, ideally placed for high-impact back lighting.In the roof trusses, 60 MegaPointes were positioned to beam down, along and around the audience area.
The Night Tent was hosted by a series of different curators each night, some of whom supplied their own lighting directors / head of lighting for their evening e.g. Robbert-Jan Vernooij who oversaw and ran lighting for the Awakenings line up on the Friday night.
The FORTES and 24 of the total 142 LEDBeam 350s helping to ramp up the excitement were new purchases by Hungarian rental company Light Positive, which has been supplying this stage at Sziget for the last six years.
They also purchased more MegaPointes at the same time, as these are still on riders, and are always in demand either for their own projects or for cross rentals. They have around 250 Robe products now in the current rental fleet.
A Light Positive team of six including Nandor Ládos and Sándor Orosz looked after the Night Stage, but their total crew on site was around 60 as they also supplied three other areas,including The Circus Stage and the Street Theatre Stage. Both of these featured Robe Tarrantula wash beams, which were also part of the new batch of lights delivered to them by AVL Trade.
Revolut
The Revolut Stage – the second biggest of the event – featured a heady mix of global stars, local gems, and rising talent. Including Justice, Empire of the Sun, Blossoms, Caribou, Papa Roach and loads more.
Looking after lighting here were Bence Doma and Almos Bus, both regular freelancers for VEG (Visual Europe Group). The overhead house lighting rig comprised 24 FORTES, 22 Tarrantulas, 34 MegaPointes and 12 Tetra2s, as well as a variety of different floor packages, some with additional Robe fixtures, which they also supplied to certain acts.
The house lighting rig was designed to cater for up to six bands a day, all of which required serious organisation, logistics and co-ordination.
The house lighting was rigged on an eight-leg steel ground support system, and these assorted Robe fixtures were picked for their power, reliability and flexibility to meet the demands of multiple lighting designers.
Main Stage
Production lighting for Sziget’s Main Stage was designed by Mark Kontra, part of the team from rental specialist Colossal, which supplied all the lighting kit for this area.
Kontra has been involved in some capacity with this stage and the festival for the last 14 years, and since 2015 has headed up the Main Stage lighting team. The Robe count this year was over 300.
This included 56 FORTES, 30 iFORTE LTX, six FS (follow spot) versions and 24standard, 40 iFORTES, 56 Pointes, 38 ColorStrobes, 34 iBar 15s and 48 LEDBeam350s, with four RoboSpot systems available for those wanting to make use of the iFORTE LTX FSs which were installed on the four FOH towers.
Versatility was key again here, with fixtures chosen and positioned to be as accessible and accommodating as possible for everyone using the lighting for the duration of the event.
Main Stage headliners this year were acclaimed BRAT herself Charli XCX, who got fans moving and grooving on the first night, while the festival closed on the following Monday with Midwest Princess Chappell Roan, and in between these were Shawn Mendes, Kid Cudi, Anyma and Post Malone.
Robe’s own live musical talent also made a surprise appearance on the Johnnie Walker Stage with a special collaboration between DJ Stereonoize – Csaba Csanádi from AVL Trade – and Robe’s international business development manager, Bram de Clerck – DJ Phos – who played a funky set that energised an otherwise relaxed Thursday afternoon in the heat!
