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Robe fixtures in action at OppiKoppi festival

Pretoria based rental company Stage Effects, run by Theo Papenfus, has been involved in the South African music festival OppiKoppi - located in the bushland of the Limpopo province, near the mining town of Northam - for several years. Papenfus first worked as a tech on the event, and since 1999 Stage Effects has been a supplier. This year they provided site-wide lighting and visuals for five production stages.

Production lighting for the Main Stage (the James Phillips Stage) was designed by Erik de Bruin, who used Stage Effects’ new Robe MegaPointes. He also used 12 x standard Pointes, plus some other fixtures including LED washes, LED battens and 4-cell blinders.

OppiKoppi 2018 was the second time de Bruin had used MegaPointes, supplied to Stage Effects earlier in the year by Robe’s South African distributor DWR. The first was a daylight show for rockers Seether in Johannesburg.

The James Phillips Stage is a permanent thatched structure on the OppiKoppi site with an apex roof, limited height, no flying facilities and a cosy performance space. It’s been used as the main stage before but not in the event’s most recent years, so with it returning to its roots and hosting the largest headliners this year, Theo Papenfus decided to spec more lights than ever before.

Three trussing goalpost structures were installed to maximise the space. A larger one square-on upstage, flanked by two smaller and slightly angled ones left and right, to give side lighting positions. The MegaPointes were all rigged on the cross members of these goalposts, six along the back and three on each side.

Eight Pointes were placed along the front lip of the stage and the other four were squeezed in upstage together with a small LED screen. With these 24 x Robe fixtures Erik de Bruin created some structural framework looks utilising the beams, and when these shot past the ceiling rafters and pierced the night sky, they could be spotted from across the site and far beyond.

Having 12 x MegaPointes and 12 x Pointes on the rig, de Bruin lit all the bands on the main stage that didn’t bring their own LD/operator. Lighting control was a grandMA2 console. One visiting lighting designer was Jonathan Bandli, from Bad Weather Productions, who worked for Cape Town based indie rockers Grassy Spark.

Erik de Bruin and eight crew from Stage Effects started work on site on Sunday to be ready for the event which opened the following Thursday. Being in the middle of the bush, everything had to run on generator power.

(Photos: Louise Stickland)

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