Look Out for Production, in the Trees!

A Luminous Festival Case Study

Luminous is a boutique festival held on a private property in Woodend, about an hour north-west of Melbourne. It was their third edition, and the first two they’d run themselves, dry-hiring gear and managing production in-house.

This year, they had more budget and a clearer idea of what they wanted, and one company handling audio, lighting and backline end-to-end, with technicians on-site across the whole weekend, so the crew could stop babysitting speakers and start running a festival was the goal.

That just so happens to be us, so this is where our stories merged.

They’d been following our Instagram and had seen the rigs we’d run at Daybreak Festival and Interstellar Groove. They reached out, we talked through what was possible, and by the time the conversations had run their course, we were loading into Woodend on a Thursday with a weekend of good music ahead of us. The power of social media, hey?

Prepare, prepare, prepare

The festival opened Friday evening, so rather than load in on the day and spend the opening hours firefighting, we made a call early on to get there Thursday and set everything up with a little more time to spare.

We arrived around midday and worked through until midnight. By the time we knocked off, the audio was tuned, the lighting scenes were programmed, and the laser was lasering. When the punters arrived Friday morning, they walked into a working festival.

That Thursday setup day is something we push for whenever possible, because it’s the difference between a relaxed Friday and a frantic one. Organising events can be stressful; we look to reduce that stress for others wherever possible. We’re like those squeezy balls you probably have on your desk right now.

It's all about the sound

For a 400-person outdoor event in this particular setting, we opted for our Funktion-One system: four F218 MK2 subwoofers and four Res 2 tops. It’s a rig that doesn’t need to be loud to feel powerful, as the low end sits under the music rather than on top of it (ideal for outdoor events).

The previous two years, the Luminous crew had run dB subs and speakers, which were no longer suitable for what this event had become. The feedback across the weekend was consistent: people were talking about how good the sound was. And it was, because the backline was full festival spec; CDJ-3000s, A9 mixers, Xone mixers, technics turntables and foldbacks.

With quite a few DJ transitions across two nights, having labelled cables and spare lengths on the back end meant changeovers were tight. When the applause died down for one act, and the next was ready, we could mute the amps, swap the mixer, and have audio back up in around 45 seconds. The energy stayed right where it was meant to: up.

It's actually also all about the lights

The Luminous crew had a strong aesthetic vision: minimal, effective, purposeful. They didn’t want a light show firing into the crowd. They wanted the structure lit up, the trees doing something beautiful, and a laser that added to all of it.

We had eight PAR cans and eight RGB strobes to work with, plus the laser, smoke and haze. The PAR cans went under each pillar of the stage structure, uplighting it from the ground. Four strobes went behind the stage to illuminate a massive tree hanging overhead (which looked freaking cool after dark). The remaining four strobes needed a home that would give the dance floor energy without washing out the stage, and that’s where we stepped over to our favourite place. The outside of the box baby! (Yes, that was cheesy, we don’t care).

We climbed into the surrounding trees, screwed fixtures directly into them, and ran cables between trunks to get strobes positioned high over the dance floor. The natural environment became part of the rig, and nobody was Springsteening (dancing in the dark). It sat perfectly inside the minimal aesthetic that was requested because it used what was already there rather than bringing in extra gear.

It wasn't all smooth sailing

No multi-day outdoor event goes entirely without incident. At Luminous, the brief called for a 25 kVA generator on a trailer; what arrived was a 63 kVA unit with no trailer, which requires a truck to move. Useless to us in that configuration. We made some calls, pushed hard, and by Friday morning, the right generator was on site. Oh, we also had some small 6.5kVa generators for the Thursday bump in, so we weren’t completly stuck without power.

Dust was the other ongoing management task. At outdoor events on dry ground, it gets into DJ equipment constantly. We run a cleaning rotation every hour or so: brushes to clear surfaces, a blower to push dust out of the gear properly. We do the same with the Funktion-One boxes. It’s a small thing that prevents large problems, and after a full weekend of dancing, the equipment continues to run exactly as it should.

The Jungle crew be jungling

We ran audio and lighting throughout the weekend with dedicated technical support at all times. The Luminous crew were freed up to spend the weekend doing what festival organisers should be doing: managing gates, first aid, water runs, patron welfare, security, and logistics.

At one point during the weekend, there were ten or fifteen people crammed into the front-of-house tent asking us how everything worked. On a couple of drops, we let a few punters trigger the laser and lighting cues themselves. They went home saying they’d done lighting at a festival, and we had a great time. These are the moments that make for a great festival.

Why they picked us

Luminous came to Jungle Audio because they wanted to stop managing their own production and start running their festival. That’s exactly what happened. The audio was better than anything they’d had before, the lighting did more with less, without issue.

If they do it again next year, and the years after that, we’d be glad to be back.