Adlib Gets in the Mix at Creamfields 2013

	Aerial shot of the Creamfields site. Photo: Marc De Groot

Liverpool-based Adlib was delighted to supply complete visual and sound design and equipment packages to four high profile arenas at Creamfields 2013 -- the UK's electronic dance music festival.

Adlib again worked closely with creative and technical production specialists LarMac Live on the event, staged at Daresbury Estate over the August Bank holiday weekend.

Adlib's Chris Neary evolved and interpreted the initial visual briefs for the Cream arena, the Skream & Benga arena, emerging talent in the Annie Mac Presents arena, and the hospitality area.

There is a strong local and regional affinity between Adlib and Cream, the night club that began as a cool house music experience in the heart of Liverpool in 1992 and grew to include staging the legendary annual Creamfields UK event.

Neary designed lighting and coordinated visuals for all four arenas based on the fundamentals of offering an amazing visual experience; the rigs being flexible enough to look different throughout long periods of operation; and accommodating specials and the additional requirements for specific artists.

The Cream arena was the biggest tented space on site and the starting point for visuals was trying to make it appear bigger and wider still, extending the lighting into the auditorium to envelop the audience and further involve them in the action.

Three ground supported goal-post structures were installed and hung with video, supplied by XL Video, extending the sides of the stage right and left out to the edge of the tent. Neary took full advantage of these as hanging points for lighting as well, attaching Showtec Active Sunstrip fixtures on the goalposts, together with 12 Martin MAC Aura LED wash fixtures to break up the blocks of video screen.

Onstage there was a large video wall behind the DJ booth, so Adlib rigged three trusses over the stage, and on the back two of these installed a total of 12 Martin MAC Vipers profiles and 12 of their new MAC Viper Washes. Neary wanted bright high-impact fixtures that would hold their own against the very bright LED screens. Two Atomic strobes also graced each truss.

On the front truss were six MAC Auras for front wash onstage and three eight-lite Moles for audience illumination. Above the audience two trusses were rigged from the tent king poles running across the width of the space, each fitted with a total of 16 MAC Vipers, 16 Viper Washes, and eight Atomic strobes.

The operators in Cream were Adlib's Andy Rowe and Nathan Harrison using a Road Hog Full Boar and an Avolites Pearl Expert to offer any visiting lighting designers a choice, both consoles running expansion wings.

Adlib provided both lighting and LED screens in the Annie Mac Presents arena for Creamfields' first lady who's talented and rising star line up included AlunaGeorge, Julio Bashmore, Eats Everything, Monki, and Toddla T Sound.

The main challenge was accommodating a large visiting lighting and visuals package based around a substantial circular truss that came in overnight on Saturday for Sunday night headliners, Sub Focus. With this in mind, Neary's house rig was designed to leave the space as clear as possible and make the process as seamless as was practical.

The design was based on stage left and right off stage trusses each hung with a set of Pixled F-30 panels together with six MAC 301s, complete with four MAC 700 Profiles ground rigged a side. At the back was another truss rigged off the ground support with five vertical columns of F-30 panels dropping down to about six feet off the deck. A row of MAC 700 washes were rigged along the top of the truss and underneath and the deck-to-screen gap was filled with a row of Mac 700 profiles that sat on flight cases. In between the six gaps in the screens were two MAC 301s on two-foot drop bars -- so at a quick glance, the back wall could resemble a solid wall of visual material and pixels -- which brought massive versatility to the party.

Above the front edge of the stage was a truss with six MAC 700 Washes and over the audience -- widthways across the room above the front-of-house position -- was another truss with another 10 MAC 700 Washes for crowd lighting. The operators were Neil Holloway and Neil Smith, using an Avolites Pearl Expert for the lights and a Catalyst media server running all the video content, which was specially prepared by Adlib's media team for the weekend.

The original visual concept for the Skream & Benga space involved "shards of video" for the environment so Neary created an apex-down triangular LED centrepiece onstage from 17 panels of Pixled F-30, which was flanked by two trusses making V shapes either side, loaded up with Clay Paky Sharpies, MAC Auras, and two-lites Moles to delineate the architecture. Beneath each truss on the floor were another six pieces of F-30 staggered in a 3-2-1 format from the stage edge into the center.

Above the main triangles each side were another four MAC Auras and four Sharpies. They used a ground support system in here and onto the legs of this rigged MAC Auras, Sharpies, and Atomics, and augmented the top edges of this structure with two-lites and Atomics -- to get a flexible and full-on face of lights in all directions.

The flown front truss featured 12 MAC700 Profiles and Washes plus two Atomics, and the same fixture count was repeated on the audience truss which, as in Annie Mac Presents, traversed the space flown above the front-of-house position.

To widen the stage aperture, six MAC 700 Profiles sat on flight cases each side of the stage wings, which also cut nicely across the stage and skimmed the audience with dramatic low-level sweeps. The Road Hog Full Boar with Playback Wing and Avolites Pearl Expert with touch Wing were operated by Charlie Rushton and Chris Richardson, and Adlib supplied another Catalyst media server for the video with tailored content for the event.

The set up of the hospitality area was three conjoined tents and a central area, in which Adlib flew a circular truss and installed an LED sculpture. A small stage was lit with ETC Source Four Junior Zooms and the main room lighting fixtures were attached to the tented structure, comprising MAC 350 Entours and MAC 301s in pairs, picked for their small size and light weight as well as the effects -- they were an ideal fit for creating mood lighting in all three rooms.

MAC 250 Beams on truss towers provided some effects and PixelPAR 90s were also used for stage lighting and toning the truss towers. This area was looked after for Adlib by Jeff Bond and Phil Woodridge.

Neary also served a crew chief for the project on site and he and his eight operators were joined by six extra crew for the in and the out.

For audio, Adlib designed the EDM sound systems with Coda Audio and JBL VerTec. The key aural requirements for electronic dance music are even coverage from the front to the very back of each arena to bring dance-loving festival goers right into the heart of the live experience.

In the Cream arena Otto Kroymann and Rhys Roberts looked after a large JBL system which included 20 JBL VT 4889s a side for the main hangs with six 4889s per side for the delays and 24 JBL VT4880 VerTec subs combined with eight L-Acoustics SB28s. Monitoring was via eight Adlib MP3 low profile wedges and the DJ fills were four L-Acoustics ARCs -- two per side -- on top of a single SB28 a side -- all run via two Yamaha PM5D consoles.

Keen to showcase the adaptability of the Coda systems Adlib deployed these in three areas -- Skream & Benga, Annie Mac, and the hospitality area.

In the brand new Skream & Benga curated arena, engineers Rui Sio and Damien Breeze used 20 Coda Airline LA12 speakers for the main arrays and 12 Coda ViRAYs for delays plus 24 Coda SCP-F subs, complete with Yamaha PM5D and Midas PRO2 consoles.

For monitoring, they utilized Adlib's own FD / DF speakers for DJ fills, together with eight Adlib MP3 wedges.

Saturday night rocked with Skream and Benga themselves plus friends including Andy C, Redlight, Rustie, Jack Beats, Alvin Risk, Zinc, Bondax, Clean Bandit, Kidnap Kid, Woz and many more.

In Annie Mac, there were another 20 Coda Airline LA12s and 16 Coda SCP-F subs for the main system with DiGiCo SD10 and Soundcraft Vi1 consoles, Lake processing and speaker management, and Adlib proprietary DJ monitoring. This was looked after by Dave Ryan and Tom Geoghegan.

Coda was used in the hospitality area with eight Airline LA12s and eight Airline LA8 infills for the main stage and area together with four Adlib 1214e infill speakers for the side tents. Engineers Mark Johnson and Vidmantas Baleisa utilized a Yamaha LS9 for mixing.

The compact and versatile Coda ViRAY was an ideal PA for the hospitality area where the flying and weight limitations of the arenas / tents make it vital to have a lightweight box and ensure the PA provides maximum coverage and intelligible SPL.

Says Adlib director Peter Abraham, "Expectations are high at any event but here working with the Cream brand, LarMac Live and delivering to the very high expectations of the client & to their audience .... is Adlib's ultimate challenge."