Held in the Barnard Park Sporting Precinct, Busselton WA, Good Day Sunshine festival delivered the country’s first COVID-safe festival format. Usually reserved for large international stadium artists, the new “in-the-round” format saw the event site split into four equal areas, each named after a famous surf spot in the south-west: Cobblestones, The Point, Windmills, and Injidup with a revolving stage called The Turntable in the centre.
Each operated as an individual venue, hosting its own entry, exit and limiting audience interaction while maximising the music festival experience.
The line-up included John Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd and Eskimo Joe.
Showscreens provided the lighting and screens with four runs of truss “outlining” the rectangular stage so that there would always be an appropriate amount of lighting on performers regardless of which section they were facing. This included moving beams and washes that allowed full visual access for all members of the crowd no matter where they were located.
The screens were set up as four IMAGs, two on either side of the stage (both front and back) and this again allowed the entire crowd to see all the action from all positions.
Lighting designer for this show was Rio Hall-Jones, Showscreens’ ‘go to’ touring guy for festivals of this size who never disappoints.
Although this was a general/open brief, Showscreens obviously needed to make sure that all performers were adequately face lit and that the stage remained visually interesting for each full 360-degree rotation. Rio came up with a simple and effective solution to meet the requirements of this brief, designing every run as a front truss to continually light the performers from the front as the stage was rotating.
Apart from having to ensure the performers were always front-lit as they rotated, there were a few other issues. One of the other main challenges was the difficulty in programming a lighting show from a front-on perspective without knowing exactly how the looks appeared from all the other angles.
Rio worked with Showscreens’ touring technicians Brad Hodgkiss and Ciaran Russel while programming the night before the event, they were able to help him program the show by giving him feedback on each of his looks and movements from other positions within the venue.
The crew only had some other minor challenges, like finding the most effective way to position systems. This was overcome early on during the design phase and did not pose a problem on-site. Camera matching was another minor issue, but Showscreens’ reliable broadcast crew and three camera operators were on top of it. They worked together on-site well before doors opened so they were able to give seamless transitions between camera feeds by the time the show started.
Most of the rig comprised units from Showscreens’ Robe stock – 12 x BMFLs, 16 x Spiders and 8 x MegaPointes whilst four Claypaky B-Eyes were used as eye candy. The two ‘side’ trusses each had four BMFL spots, four Spiider washes and a B-Eye. The ‘front and back’ trusses each had two BMFL spots, four Spiider washes, four MegaPointe beams and a B-Eye.
Screen wise the four IMAGs were built with a total of 240 YesTech P4 Black LED panels (60 per screen), powered by two NovaPro UHD 4K Processors.
Rio said there were a lot of moments in songs throughout the show that looked visually stunning and found it hard to pinpoint one that stood out above the rest. He did say that being in the round meant he was able to create some impressive textured looks with gobos from the spots in the rig.
