The popular Spin Off festival returned in 2019 with an of over 20,000 at the massive 84m x 64m mainstage tent, presenting organisers, Five-Four Entertainment, with major technical requirements where the need for screens was paramount.
To meet this demand, technical provider, Adelaide’s Novatech Creative Event Technology, employed two onstage ROE Visual Carbon 5 IMAG screens, an upstage screen, a delay screen behind FOH and two delay screens outside of the tent, controlled from two Brompton Technology SX40 processors with three Brompton Tessara XD distribution units vastly simplifying cabling requirements.
“With such a big footprint, we needed to ensure that not only everyone inside the tent could see a screen but also outside,” explains Phil Pieridis, senior video project manager from Novatech. “Using many screens generates a lot of signal distribution but the latest Brompton SX40 processor, with its huge capacity, enabled us to run multiple screens off the same processor, whilst the brilliant Tessera XD units easily resolved any cabling issues.”
Staged on Adelaide showground, the sell-out one-day festival featured the headlining acts appearing at sister festival, Splendour in the Grass, including Catfish and the Bottlemen, Childish Gambino, and Ocean Alley.
“With so many top-flight artists, technical rider demands were high and changeover times pivotal but Brompton equipment drastically reduces set-up times and configuration is really quick,” continues Pieridis. “The ability to create custom scaling in the processors and save those to pre-sets was an advantage to us, as different acts required a variety of input resolutions or needed to use different parts of the screen.”
As a daytime event, screen glare was also a big consideration but by utilising Brompton’s Tessera control over a network, the brightness of the outdoor delay screens were independently controlled throughout the day as the sun moved across the site.
