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Patrick Dierson sets stage for Ultra Music Festival guest LDs with over 300 Chauvet fixtures

Long before the first Ultra Music fans began filing into Miami’s Bayfront Park this March, the festival had already begun playing itself out in the mind of Patrick Dierson. “We started working on the pre-production process, several months out in advance and went over things again and again to get this right”, says the designer and head of The Activity, who handles technical management for the event’s main stage.

Working with Technical Producer Ray Steinman, Creative Director Richard Milstein, and the various vendors, Dierson dove deep into the artist advances to start laying out plans for the technical infrastructure that would ultimately be needed to support all the festival’s guest LDs and their clients. “The focus of our work is always on the guest technical teams and getting them everything they need to deliver their best shows”, says Dierson. “Given the uneven weight loads and tightly packed rigging needs, there are always challenges, but in the end, we wanted to give the guests what they needed.”

Among the things selected to ensure that stellar shows be delivered for main stage artists like John Summit, Skrillex, Armin van Buuren, and Deadmau5 at this year’s festival was a collection of over 300 Chauvet Professional fixtures, which, like the rest of the rig was supplied by TAG. Among these fixtures were 120 Color Strike M motorized strobe-washes, which were used often during the three-day festival by guest LDs to connect the crowd to the artists on the main stage. “They were our main strobing fixture”, says Dierson. “Their intense output, coupled with their ability to have separate color control on their plate, opened the way to some unique and flexible programming.”

While the Color Strike M units amped up crowd connections, a group of 184 Colorado PXL 16 motorized battens were opening up a range of creative options for visiting lighting crews. “The PXL Bar 16s played a very unique role in that they were embedded into the center portion of the stage structure to create a sort of capsule of light that worked its way across the stage deck, up the side walls, and across the roof”, says Dierson.

He credits the entire production crew, beginning with the TAG team including lead Kevin Mignone and crew chief Russ Felton, for contributing to the festival’s success. Also coming in for praise were Grant Davis (VJ/technical liaison), John Flanagan (FOH lighting tech lead), John Volpe (FOH video technical lead), Neil Rosenstock (audio lead), Luis Torez (SFX lead), and Ash Ali (stage manager).

“The collaboration was even more special this year”, says Dierson. “It was Ultra Music Festival’s 25th anniversary, and the sheer positivity that our crew and every guest team brought in was amazing. The guest teams are usually very good to work with but there was just something a little different about this year in that everyone simply had an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward whatever challenges arose. It was really great - and just made the entire process that much more enjoyable.”

(Photos: Adam Chandler)

www.chauvetprofessional.com

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