Global Gathering for HSL

17 August 2012

UK - Lighting and visuals rental company HSL continued its busy summer supplying lighting equipment, LED screens, trussing and rigging for the Main Stage and five tented arenas at the 2012 Global Gathering event, staged at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford ..... attracting up to 50,000 dance music fans over two days.

HSL's Tim Fawkes project managed the event and co-ordinated the supply of seven trucks worth of equipment to event production lighting designers Nick Jevons and Phil Windward of Electric Fly, also working closely with their lighting crew chief Mark Callaghan.

The main stage headliners were Tinie Tempah (Friday) and Chase & Status (Saturday). They and a host of other top international DJs and live acts - including Armin van Buren, Skrillex, Dot Rotten, James Zabiela, Ferry Corsten and hundreds more - set the Warwickshire countryside buzzing.

HSL is also supplying Chase & Status's lighting designer Neil Carson with a lighting and screens 'specials' package for their on-going summer festival tour, with a new variation making its debut at Global.

The whole approach to lighting the festival took a slightly different route this year, utilising lots of LED and smaller, lighter, brighter units - like Robe LEDBeam 100s, LEDWash 600s and Robin 300E Beams and Clay Paky Sharpies - with HSL supplying over 200 moving lights in total.

In addition to these, were 160 Molefeys, 150 Martin Professional Atomic strobes, 156 Pulsar Chroma Strips and Source Four profiles for key lighting.

For the Main stage and Arenas 4 and 5 HSL supplied sizable quantities of Martin LC and EC LED screens, arranged in different configurations.

Commenting on Global Gathering generally, HSL's Mike Oates says, "It's become a very seamless and efficient operation working with Electric Fly on this event - it goes like clockwork.

"The interesting thing each year is to see how they develop their designs and looks for the different arenas. The trend toward using the smaller and more energy efficient lightsources brings many bonuses whilst losing nothing on impact."

(Jim Evans)