(01/08/2013) For three days and three nights 135,000 Glastonbury revellers had the pleasure of seeing their favourite headline acts, lit by some of the best rock and roll lighting designers in the world, play the famous Pyramid Stage.
Taking care of the festival house rig was head of lighting, Andy Fraggle' Porter, who chose Clay Paky's extremely bright, effects-rich Alpha Profile 1500s and Alpha Wash 1500s to deliver dynamic beam shaping, vibrant colour and super bright effects to the long-running event.
2013's headlining acts included: The Rolling Stones lit by Patrick Woodroffe, Arctic Monkeys lit by Andy Watson and Mumford and Sons lit by Ed Warren. Each put Fraggle's house rig through its paces and all made dramatic and creative use of the Alpha 1500 Profiles and Washes. In addition each designer specified his own additional requirements for Clay Paky fixtures.
For the main rig Neg Earth supplied 29 Alpha Profile 1500, 10 Alpha Wash 1500, 20 Sharpy and 10 Sharpy Wash 330. However Rolling Stones LD Patrick Woodroffe added more Alpha Washes and Profiles and a number of Sharpy's to the mix. Rigged at varying levels upstage, the Sharpys provided razor-sharp architectural backlight that gave depth to the stage for the audience and television cameras alike. Meanwhile the additional Alpha Washes and Sharpys were rigged onto a custom Arch Truss to deliver strong key and feature lighting effects.
The Alpha Profile has an astonishing 1:9 ratio zoom and can transition between beam angles with breathtaking speed. It's also extremely bright and comes with a comprehensive range of graphic effects. Plus the innovative Stay-Sharp-Zoom makes the Alpha Profile 1500 a valuable tool for designers who are working in demanding lighting environments such as festivals.
Complementing the Alpha Profile was the Alpha Wash, which bought vibrant colour to the stage day and night. Featuring enhanced optics and a comprehensive colour generation system it's extra-wide 11 - 74 zoom range is clean from centre to edge.
As has been the case for many years Fraggle' was in charge of lighting at the Pyramid Stage. Working alongside Neg Earth's account director, Julian Lavender, and his team of skilled riggers and technicians, Fraggle managed a gruelling schedule of overnight turnarounds to rig, focus and programme each headlining act's bespoke rigs.
We were aware that the headline acts use the Clay Paky Alpha Profile and Wash 1500s as part of their standard touring rig , explains Fraggle, who had also been crew chief on the Rolling Stones UK and US Shows last Christmas. This included the Rolling Stones' LD Patrick Woodroffe. He has been using more than 100 Clay Paky fixtures, including 32 Alpha Profile 1500s, on the '50 and Counting' celebratory shows. My job is to ensure that we can offer the lighting solutions that each designer expects. They don't get much time to pre-programme their shows and they prefer to work with the fixtures that they are used to .
We positioned the Alpha Wash 1500s in the house rig on LX1 and LX 2 to provide the powerful backlight required, continues Fraggle. This was not just for the main acts but also for the bands playing during the daytime as they needed something that would still have an impact on the stage and pick out the performers from the backdrops.
While Patrick Woodroffe added a number of Alpha Profiles to the front truss and specially built side trusses, Andy Watson bought in a considerable number of Sharpys to provide dramatic beams to balance the Arctic Monkeys' dynamic laser show. Designers love the Alpha Profile 1500s for their high output and, with the profile, the precise framing system, explains Fraggle. They are incredibly reliable and extremely robust, which is an absolute must when you are working in all weathers, outside! As for the Sharpys well everyone loves a Sharpy and Andy Watson used them to great effect to set off his crowd pleasing and very lively design.
Not only did Clay Paky fixtures take headline position on the Pyramid but they were also specified for The Other Stage. Again, Neg Earth supplied the lighting and crew but here LD Tom Lesh was in charge of the stage: We chose the Alpha Spot HPE 1500 and the Alpha Wash 1500 because we know they are good, bright, reliable all round fixtures, explains Lesh. We needed fixtures that read well for the daylight shows and that would enhance headliners productions. The Clay Paky fixtures offered incoming designers a solid air package that worked with their floor packages and could make an impact over and above their visual screens.
Lesh says that the units, which were first fired up on Wednesday afternoon were not turned off again until Sunday night once the festival had finished. We had absolutely no issues with any of the fixtures, which I think is impressive considering the environment they were operating in and the weather we faced - rain and shine, damp and dust.
One of Lesh's favorite features is the stay sharp zoom function for automatic focusing: This is especially useful in a festival situation where we have time constraints and often can't see enough in daylight to get a good sharp focus to gobos, Lesh explains. I especially like the fact that you can go from narrow to wide zoom and can still be sure that it's going to look good. This was a great feature in this somewhat challenging situation for myself, and visiting LDs alike.
It is a total thrill to see Clay Paky fixtures used on two such an iconic stages by such talented lighting designers, comments Glyn O Donoghue, managing director of Clay Paky's UK distributor, Ambersphere Solutions. We also thank Neg Earth for the incredible technical support and back up they give Clay Paky products in the field .
Increasingly we are seeing talented desi
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
(01/08/2013) For three days and three nights 135,000 Glastonbury revellers had the pleasure of seeing their favourite headline acts, lit by some of the best rock and roll lighting designers in the world, play the famous Pyramid Stage.
