Outdoor festival season in the U.S. extends well into the fall with festivals such as
Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas – now in its fourth season – emerging as a highlight of
the EDM festival calendar. Promotional events company Insomniac again joined
forces with Life Is Beautiful and top lighting designer Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting
to bring the fan-favourite Troubadour Stage alive, which took over Downtown Las
Vegas from September 23–25.

Lieberman, who worked with the three-day music, art, culinary and learning festival
for the second year, handled lighting design duties on the high-energy Troubadour
Stage, where artists like Bassnectar and ZHU drew huge crowds. Standing 120 feet
wide and 240 feet long, the domed Troubadour Stage took fans on a multisensory
journey with the latest in lighting and video production hanging from a towering
ceiling. Production for the event was handled by AG Light & Sound, who supplied an
entertainment technology package that included 66 Elation Colour Chorus 72™ LED
battens, 36 Platinum Spot 35 Pro™ moving heads, and 116 Opti Tri 30™ compact
LED Par lights.

Well familiar with Elation’s Colour Chorus 72 LED battens from having used them on
several festivals over the past year, including at last year’s Life is Beautiful festival,
Lieberman again incorporated the 6-ft long strip lights into his design, lining them
on stage and around LED screens, as well as atop LED displays that hugged the
audience on either side of the stage. “They are durable and high intensity and fit
our needs when detailing and highlighting a truss design, not just colouring it,’
stated Steve Lieberman of the Colour Chorus 72 fixture.

Elation’s powerful Platinum Spot 35 Pro, a feature-packed 800W moving head,
worked from four long fingers of truss that extended out over the audience, a
fixture that Lieberman says has great aerial geometric gobos with very clear
definition and looks great up in the air with fog. “They also have clarity of focus and
a nice defined edge,’ he adds.

The designer again turned to Elation’s small Opti Tri 30 Par light to warm and
highlight the spectacular truss elements in various shades of colour. Lieberman has
found the compact fixture quite useful on many of his larger designs, praising its
small profile and great output for its size. “It fits perfectly into 12′ truss and makes
for a clean detail aesthetically,’ he said. “And because it fits inside the truss if the
focus is slightly off they still look good and you also get a nice reflection off of the
truss aluminium. It’s also easy to mount, easy to address and one guy can put
twelve in a basket.’