Elation Platinum FLX and ACL 360 Matrix Premiere at Inaugural KAABOO Festival

LD Nook Schoenfeld was the first lighting designer to use Elation Professional's Platinum FLX hybrid moving head, the company says, as well as the new ACL 360 Matrix narrow-beam LED effect light, and came away wholly satisfied. Both lights had their show premieres at a VIP-only Sheryl Crow concert held on the Trestles Stage just prior to the opening of the inaugural KAABOO Festival in Del Mar, California.

"I really liked the Platinum FLX and Elation should be commended for this fixture," Schoenfeld stated just hours after Sheryl Crow's performance. "Being the first time anyone had used these fixtures I had to get a rushed fixture library to use in my console. So I was actually unsure of what I would see on stage for that evening's performance as I wrote the entire light show in the light of the California sun. But here's where the beauty of this beam came through. Despite the sun blazing away, I could see where the beams were focusing on the marley floor with ease. Come show time, the focuses were almost perfect. Another great attribute of this was the ability to pick out gobos and sharpen them up with the focus encoder -- during daylight! How rad is that?" The new multi-functional FLX moving head houses the Philips 470W Platinum 20R lamp and emits up to 20,000 lumens.

The KAABOO Festival ran from September 18 - 20 at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds just north of San Diego. Promoted as a new kind of arts and entertainment experience -- "everything a typical music festival is not" -- it is designed around comfort and quality with a sublime setting on the warm shores of the Pacific. KAABOO featured three-days of dancing, contemporary art, and fine cuisine from celebrity chefs, a dedicated comedy stage, and of course world-class music with top acts like No Doubt, The Killers, and the Zac Brown Band.

Lighting design across the festival's 5 outdoor and 2 indoor stages, all named after well-known California surfing spots, was by Chris Lisle and included ambient lighting from the roof of the grounds to the palm trees surrounding the track. "We thoroughly enjoyed having Elation as a partner on the Trestles stage at KAABOO," Lisle says. "Their products were fantastic to work with and helped give a great look."

Lighting on the Trestles Stage consisted of 24 Platinum FLX, 24 ACL 360 Matrix, and 10 Platinum Wash ZFX Pro fixtures. Erik Parker, associate lighting designer for the festival and LD for the Trestles Stage, commented about his fixture choice, "I was looking for a good mixture of wash fixtures and spot fixtures and John Dunn [Elation rental and production market manager] mentioned the new Platinum FLX and ACL 360 Matrix. These both seemed like perfect options to fill out the rig; then I used the Platinum Wash ZFX Pros for a clean downstage wash."

Because many of the shows on the Trestles Stage throughout the event were during the daytime hours, Parker was looking for fixtures that would provide some eye-candy as well as the brightness to pop. "I chose the Platinum FLX fixtures because of their simplicity to throw into 'beam mode' and get that extra brightness," he says. "The ACL 360 Matrix was a great eye-candy fixture for this situation. The chases and designs you were able to get out of it allowed for some great looks, even when the sun was directly on the stage."

The Platinum FLX and ACL 360 fixtures were positioned upstage, as well as on trusses flown on either side of the stage for a side wash. "It was really simple to go from a pencil thin beam to a fat tree trunk length of light," Schoenfeld says of the Platinum FLX's independent dual optics, which can switch between beam, spot, and wash modes in a snap. "Also, when it came to the color mixing I was pleasantly surprised. I could mix a red or green primary color without losing the typical light output that I am accustomed to in other fixtures. I had a song where I bumped all the bright ACL 360 Matrix fixtures to a solid white color and snapped the Platinum FLX's to red. I fully expected the white light to wash out the red beams, but nay, there they were in all their glory. I wish I could do that with all moving lights."

The ACL 360 Matrix fixtures, a versatile moving head effect with 360° pan and tilt rotation and dense 4-degree beam from each lens, were hung from two upstage trusses. "The punch emitted out of these babies was quite nice and focusing fanned arrays of beams was simple," Schoenfeld says. "I had enough of them to make a nice wash on the stage despite the small aperture of the beam." Using 25 individual 15W RGBW LEDs and advanced collimator optic lens, the ACL 360 Matrix's continuous movement and individual pixel control make for a variety of dynamic effects possibilities.

Included on the Trestles Stage front truss were Platinum Wash ZFX Pro's, multi-purpose RGBW wash lights with 19x 15W LEDs and array controllable zones for eye-candy looks. "It threw out some serious lumens as I was able to cover each band member with a single fixture in a dark lavender color," Nook commented. "Yes, they have a sexy lavender color for an LED fixture!" The Platinum Wash ZFX's were also utilized to light a building structure at the fairgrounds that served as upstage scenery. Schoenfeld stated, "I constantly had to lower their intensity as my scenery was blowing out my other light beams on stage."

According to Schoenfeld, the most impressive part of all the Elation fixtures was the movement. "Whether in a slow sweeping move to Sheryl Crow or a fast-paced ballyhoo, these lights just ran smooth. No problems or lapses with effects-engine-related cues, they just plain worked. The lights I used at this gig were all brand new out of the cardboard boxes yet every function of every light worked flawlessly for the whole show."

Production company Visions Lighting (www.visionslighting.com) supplied the lighting gear to the Trestles Stage and three other stages -- Humor Me, Encore, and Zuma. "Nathan Jones from Visions Lighting kicked butt in being the lighting tech and board-op for this stage!" says Parker. "He got everything up and running and hung out to make the bands without LDs look great and to work with those carrying an LD. And to all of the Visions Lighting staff, they really worked hard to make the design pop. They provided gear on a few of the music stages and they killed each of them!"

Although Schoenfeld admits he's not crazy about being the first person to 'wring out' new fixtures on a show, he says the experience was positive. "I put these lights through their paces and seriously beat them up yet there were no failures," he says. "All the fixtures behaved well and at this point I'd be happy to take any new Elation product out on a show, sight unseen. Go figure, I use the Platinum FLX on just one gig, and I don't ever want to go back." Other Elation lighting (Platinum SBX, Platinum BX, and Protron 3K LED Strobes) was used on several of the other stages at KAABOO as well, and many of the 100+ palm trees throughout the show site were lit with Elation ELAR 108 PARs.