In the Field: ChamSys at Sorrento Solstice Festival

Photos by Nic Roberts Media

More than 9,000 people descended on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula for the Sorrento Winter Solstice Festival, bringing live music, markets and the annual burning of a six-metre community-built effigy to the foreshore.

Technical production was led by Jack Jones of Outlook Communications, with our own Ben Rawnsley taking on lighting design and operation for the main stage.

For Ben, the design started with the solstice itself.

The lighting moved from warm golds through the afternoon into deeper blues and crisp whites as night settled over Sorrento, while a circular arrangement of fixtures helped carry the transition from sun to moon.

There was another challenge too. The stage was sharing the audience’s attention with a six-metre burning effigy nearby. Pixel fixtures, blinders and moving heads were used to build depth and movement around the performance area, giving the stage a visual presence that could develop as daylight disappeared.

At the centre of it all was a ChamSys MQ250 Stadium Console.

When the Plan Changes

Anyone who works in live production knows the final rig does not always look exactly like the one on paper.

At Sorrento, part of the planned fixture package changed on site, with static fixtures replaced by moving heads. That could have meant a substantial programming rebuild.

On ChamSys, it didn’t.

Ben changed the fixture types, updated the relevant groups and created the new position palettes needed for the replacement fixtures. Around five minutes later, the show was ready to move forward.

“When you need to set up very quickly and just roll with it within half an hour, there’s no console that will beat a ChamSys.”

That moment probably says more about the platform than a list of specifications could.

ChamSys is built around a programming workflow that allows changes to carry through a show rather than forcing the operator to rebuild every affected element individually. When time on site is disappearing quickly, that flexibility matters.

Experience Behind the Console

Ben’s familiarity with ChamSys didn’t begin when we became its Australian distributor.

He had already spent years using the platform as a lighting designer before joining Showtools, developing the kind of working knowledge that comes from programming shows, dealing with changes on site and needing the console to respond when the pressure is on.

That experience now sits within our team.

For us, that is an important part of representing ChamSys in Australia. We can talk about the consoles technically, but we can also draw on someone who continues to use them in the same production environments as our customers.

Sorrento was a good example of both sides coming together: a strong lighting concept, a changing rig and a ChamSys workflow that allowed Ben to adapt without losing momentum.

Want to take a closer look at ChamSys?

Contact our team to organise a demo or speak with your local Showtools representative.