HSL supplied lighting and rigging for all 7 live arenas at Creamfields 2006, including the main outdoor stage, plus the large Hospitality area. They also supplied audio to five venues and co-ordinated the main stage sound via ML Executives for event producers Loudsound.

HSL's production team was led by Mike Oates, Howard Dean and Rupert Reynolds, who managed a crew of 12, and the gear also filled 12 artics!

HSL brought in Steven Abbiss to design generic site-wide lighting schemes for all areas, created to work for all the artists appearing in the 15 hour non-stop dance extravaganza. The main stage lighting rig also had input from Ian MacEwan, LD for headliners Prodigy who rocked the house with a stonking classic Prodigy set. Goldfrapp, The Zutons and Knarls Barclay also played live.

Howard Dean completed the sound design for the HSL supplied venues - all of which featured identical Community Solutions series' systems, apart from the Cream Arena, which moved and grooved with a Community Airforce system. All were powered by Labgruppen amps and featured Yamaha side-of-house mixing consoles.

This year saw the 45,000 capacity Creamfields event move its positive vibes to a new venue at Daresbury near Warrington, which was a resounding success for event manager Jim King and production manager Lee Charteris.


Main Stage

This took up approximately half of the 60 motors that HSL supplied to the event.

The moving lights were 20 Robe ColorSpot 1200 ATs and 20 ColorWash 1200 ATs, a mixture of Atomic and Hungaroflash strobes plus over 120 PARs and a selection of ACLs and Molefeys, all consuming over 200 channels of Avo dimming. Console was a WholeHog II, specified by Ian MacEwan.


Cream & Goodgreef Arena

This was the largest tented venue, with a start-studded line-up including Paul Van Dyke, Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren and others used to large spectacular light and effects shows. Lighting was operated by Nathan Wan using an Avolites Diamond 4 Elite console. The fixtures were rigged onto a trussing system criss-crossing the tent, and included 24 Robe ColorSpot 1200 ATs and 24 ColorWash 1200 ATs, 24 JTE PixeLines and 9 Martin Atomic strobes plus a mix of generics - PARs, ACLs and Moles.


Site Wide

Elsewhere across site, it was decided to light the different spaces with rigs that were virtually identical, differentiated only by the fixture count variations according to the size of the tent. This policy allowed them the agility to easily swap things around if the specs changed at the last minute - which was not uncommon!

Over in the Chibuku tent, lighting was rigged onto two upright truss sections and a front truss, featuring 12 Martin MAC 500s and another 12 MAC b600s, ACLs and blinders. Like all the other smaller arenas, lighting control in all of them was Avolites Pearls - chosen for their great live operationality - the Chibuku desk was run by Mark Wynne-Edwards.

The Beatdown arena featured a great live performance by DJ Shadow, complete with his visual set which required a 20ft wide screen to be squeezed into the space. Rear lighting was therefore a little tricky, so fixtures were rigged onto four upright trussing sections and a front truss, shaped to fit the room. The moving lights in here were 8 MAC 500s and eight 600s, operated by Ian Bintcliff.

Over in the Subliminal Sessions Arena the lighting rig was also configured to fit onto four uprights and a front truss - limited by the low height behind the stage and also by the available infrastructure to which trussing could be attached. Fixtures in here were again MAC 500s and 600s - 12 of each - plus a miscellany of ACLs, PARs and Moles.

Circus & Cream Audio Deluxe had two trusses slung between rear of stage and the tent king poles, pointing at 45 degree angles outwards and upwards. Moving lights were 12 MAC 500s and twelve 600s plus some generics, operated by Mike "Snoopy" Cooper.

The Tidy Arena production was co-ordinated for Tidy by Simon Barrington, with all lighting kit supplied by HSL. The lighting console was an Avolites Sapphire run by Tidy's own operators and the lights were hung on a T-shaped box truss made from 12 inch trussing. Fixtures were Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 575 ATs Spot - 12 of each type - and four High End Cyberlights - a classic 'ravers favourite' - which HSL dusted off for the occasion.

Last but not least, HSL put considerable effort into lighting the Hospitality area. Fixtures were rigged to a truss running along the spine of the tent. Headroom was low, so Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 250 ATs were chosen for their compact size, plus 20 JTE PixelPARs and Studio Due SpaceFlowers, operated by Ryan Hopkins.

Mike Oates comments "Once again Creamfields has been a complete success for us. Moving on to a new site is always challenging, but fielding a strong crew made things very easy. We have honed Creamfields down to a streamlined operation over the years, but this year, for the first time ever, we had another 7 major productions out that same weekend - making it our busiest one on record to date"


Date of issue: September 2006