Hard Summer was held at Fontana Motor Speedway this year... The 4th location in 6 years for this festival, another new venue, another place to figure out the best way to put a large scale production into. A few things were obvious upon my first walk through with my contact Eddy at Live Nation ... This place has miles and miles of concrete and pavement and it's also very windy where they want to put the main-stage. Yikes! A big tall stage , with lot's of heavy stuff hanging from it and a windy venue... A staging company owner's biggest nightmare.... it might be time to bite the bullet and fabricate that roof base detail for our A3 roof. A base detail ties the support towers of the roof together on the ground level to create a stronger structure. A good base detail will hold concrete and/or water ballast to help eliminate the need for as many external guy lines away from the structure to make it safe. I decided as the owner of Stage-Tech I wanted both. Fortunately for me, I had the 4 very good resources at my disposal to accomplish this project.
Joe G, my long time employee, expert Vectorworks drafter and general self proclaimed "mr. know it all".
Jeff R, my engineer of choice when it comes to all things safe in entertainment.
Tom M, my steel fabricator of choice who's scope of service falls right in-line with this type of project.
A blend of a great Crew Kenny K, Lorenzo O, Matt S, OZ, Abel, Aaron H and Nacho.
Thankfully, between those 4 resources working as a team and a handful of input from myself and others the A3 base detail got fabricated and painted just in time and performed its task as needed. See some Pics
The base detail and corresponding bolts for the 10 roof towers had to match up perfectly with almost no play to spare. Since we did not have time from the finish of fabrication to the Install to mock the piece up in the shop we were counting on everyone having done their job correctly. If any one of the 4 resources had not done their job correctly, it was going to be a VERY stress filled week.. Drum roll...Thankfully I had the right TEAM on the case!
PRODUCTION
Next up was getting the Design that was accepted and approved to get up in the air and working for Acts like Boys Noize, Dillon Francis, Flostradamus, Destructo, Ice Cube, Major Lazer, Zed's Dead and more...
Again thankfully I had a solid team with players like Ryan B (lighting) and Reynaldo G(video) Kenny K (rover) figuring things out 10 days before load in to avoid as many issues as possible and prepare themselves for whatever might arise in the process. Again, thankfully I had the right TEAM on the case!
Thank you to all the Stage-Tech crew and workers, from planning, to install, to operation, to removal...
Thank you Hard Summer!
CG