Ever since the first Castle Lite Unlocks Music Experience in 2011, music fans have come to rely on the brand for its winning recipe of great South African acts performing alongside international heavy-weights, supported by outstanding production. This year’s event was no exception, with Castle Lite Unlocks Chance the Rapper exceeding all expectations with a record-breaking rig at the TicketPro Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg.
Glen21 Entertainment, a leading Johannesburg-based entertainment solutions agency, won the contract to serve as the event promoter for the Castle Lite Experience. In the lead up to this year’s events, the brand and Glen21 Entertainment, promised fans a production that would be an unforgettable montage of multimedia technology delivering a concert experience like no other.
“Castle Lite Unlocks is not just a concert, it’s an experience, and we always try to create a production that is innovative and exciting for the audience. We will be breaking boundaries so that consumers can have a one-of-a-kind experience at our concert,” executive producer Kgothatso Kutu said in a radio interview leading up to the show.
To deliver on this promise, Glen21 Entertainment contracted the services of 4Plus3 Productions, a dynamic events management company that’s making a name for itself as a reputable and innovative service provider not only in South Africa, but across the African continent. 4Plus3 Productions director, Sven Hansen chatted with Pro-Systems Africa News ahead of the opening of the show on 30 April, where we had the privilege of taking a tour of the impressive rig supplied by Gearhouse.
As with many international artists, Chance the Rapper has a creative team behind him that is very protective of the artist’s brand. Glen21 Entertainment was provided with a detailed and thorough rider in the lead up to the show, which stipulated that everything, including staging, audio, and lights had to be sourced locally. In response, Hansen and his team from 4Plus3 Productions turned to the Gearhouse Group to supply full technical for the show.
The vision behind the Castle Lite Unlocks Experience demands a level of staging and production that far exceeds that of a standard international your, even when dealing with a high-level artist such as Chance. In response, Hansen worked closely with legendary lighting and production designer, Tim Dunn of Gearhouse and Warren le Grange of Khoi Kreative to design a show that would deliver the one-of-a-kind experience demanded by the Castle-Lite Unlocks Experience Brand. “International design teams can sometimes be dead-set on a production company delivering a complete duplication of the technical requirements prescribed by the tour rider. However, Lee Moro, who serves as production manager for Chance the Rapper, was more open to the design proposed by our creative team,” Hansen explains. The result was one of the largest stages ever to be built inside the TicketPro Dome, complete with an astonishing LED display that included more than 900 individual panels. This was a show that will not soon to be forgotten.
