This year’s Rocking the Daisies – which coincided with the festival’s tenth birthday – was the biggest and best year yet! It was the fifth time that Kilowatt AV saw involvement in the festival, this year being commissioned to conceptualise, design and fully execute four of the eight stages (where they incorporated Avolites Ai technology and Robe fixtures) as well as multiple activation areas.
Rocking the Daisies was held at the start of October at the Cloof Wine Estate in Darling, under an hours drive from Cape Town, and included a line up of international and local musical acts, camping, relaxing and good food. In fact the owners never suspected that what started off, as a small festival on their tranquil grounds, would turn into one of the most popular annual music occasions on the South African calendar.
“We were commissioned by Seed Experiences to provide a technical solution for the Lemon Tree Theatre, the Campsite Stage, the ever popular Beach Bar and of course the infamous Electronic Stage,” said Neil Zaayman, director of Kilowatt AV. “ We love working with the team at Seed. They trust us with their vision by giving us full control over concept and design of the Electronic Stage” the companies ‘baby’ at the festival, so to speak.
This year Kilowatt installed over a hundred panels of high res LED as a backdrop onto the stage as well as 80 panels of LED above the crowd at the Electronic Stage, a dome shaped structure. “A highlight for us was the level of immersion created for punters by having 180 LED Panels surrounding them,” said Neil. “Having said that, the hardware is not enough on its own. We used the Avolites Ai Infinity Server to video map all panels and gave multiple VJs a very simple plug & play solution. All content was managed by our very own Michael Edwards, who has become a specialist on the Ai. He is internationally trained and is one of very few in SA who can comfortably operate the Ai Infinity Server.”
The lighting was electric, including over 130 fixtures at the Electronic Stage alone. Lighting design was done by Willie Botha and Matthew Meyer. Control was on an Avolites Pearl Expert with an Akai MPD26 Midi controller as a trigger pad.
“Robe has definitely taken preference in my lighting specs and we didn’t have a single failure or problem during the three day festival,” said Neil. “ It was the first time I’ve used the Robe BMFL Blades on an event and I was impressed by the speed considering it’s such a large fixture.”
The lighting included the following:
Electronic Stage:
12 x Robe BMFL Blade
24 x Robe DL4S Profile
6 x Clay Paky Sharpy Beam Light
22 x Robe Robin Pointe
24 x Robe Robin 100 LEDBeam
12 x Robe Robin 600 LEDWash
24 x Robe LED4CE 18 RGBW 5W
12 x Phillips Nitro 510 Strobe Light
36 x LedForce 7
1 x LeMaitre MVS Hazer
2 x Martin Magnum 1800 Smoke Machine
Beach Bar:
1 x Avolites Tiger Touch II
6 x Robe Robin 600 LEDWash
6 x Robe Mini Pointes
6 x Robe LEDBeam 100
“Our secret is having the passion to create remarkable events,” said Neil. “To create remarkable events you need to focus on every detail; that creates talkability, which in turn boosts our clients’ ROI.”
Working on Rocking the Daisies gives the Kilowatt AV staff the chance to really get creative and to refine their skills. Younger technicians also gain experience working on bigger events. “It’s not always easy running a production of this magnitude out on a farm but when it all comes together there’s no place we’d rather be,” ended Neil.
Check out this video – well done Kilowatt AV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh0tU7fgoM
