ChamSys in control at Burning Man Festival
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The stage was radiantly covered in multi-colored light, courtesy of LD Bryce Cherpelis.
“My ChamSys desk and I both stood up to some harsh elements here in the middle of the desert, but it was well worth it,” said Cherpelis, who used four universes in his show. “I loved the looks we were able to create. We played with a lot of different colors and intensity levels to set a very free flowing feeling for the performances. The FX generator in my MQ40 was essential in this regard. Between intensity FX, Position FX and color FX, it was always there for me. Whenever I wanted to push the boundaries of the show, my console was ready for more.”
Not surprisingly, busking was the order of the day for Cherpelis’ Burning Man show. “There was a lot of punting,” he said. “My first page was all intensity and movement. Then, my other five pages were all FX Cue Stacks, so I could select any effect that felt right.”
With 10 faders (with 6-8 cues per fader), Cherpelis kept his show constantly going in new directions. “Everything is right there in front of me on the screen, so I don’t have to spend time doing a lot of scrolling, which was hugely important in a show like this,” he said. “It also made my life easier that I could place multiple FX cues in a cue stack on a fader. I had the option of stepping away for a few seconds when my console was running a chase to refocus my creative energy.”
With his stage set in a large multi-dimensional tent, Cherpelis had ample opportunities to create colourful visual displays. He was aided in this effort by his full colour lasers, four Rogue R1 Wash RGBW moving heads from Chauvet Professional, seven COLORband PiX IP RGB linear fixtures from Chauvet DJ and a collection of SlimPAR Pro colour rendering par units.
“You can’t come to a festival like this and not indulge your wildest colour fantasies,” he said. “The white tent with all of its irregular surfaces provided us with an ideal canvas for our colorized visuals, and we used it to full advantage.”
Like his ChamSys console, the lights used in Cherpelis’ design stood up to the harsh elements out in the Nevada high desert. “We had a paintbrush in our kit to remove the dust from our rig, but it all worked fine,” he said. “The weather was intense, but everything about Burning Man was intense. I’m glad our show lived up to its surroundings.”
(Jim Evans)
