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Lighting and sound designers are often fiercely loyal to their control platform of choice; this concept is not better exemplified than in the work of Dutch lighting designer Pepijn van der Sanden. A true-blue fan of the ETC Hog platform, Pepijn is still an in-demand LD for tours and corporate productions across Europe, and always brings the right Hog for the job.
In addition to his aggressive work schedule, Pepijn also finds time to teach Hog 4 training classes across Europe. Most recently, he was busy running the visuals for the OTTO Work Force Anniversary Weekend, where OTTO threw a spectacular event full of culinary delights, a dazzling theatre show, and a smashing afterparty.
Asked how he got in the business, Pepijn recalls, “I started pulling plugs from an audio desk as a kid; my father is a conductor and his twin brother is a sound engineer, and I was also exposed to many classical music concerts. As a teenager, we did some DJing, school parties, local sports clubs, etc. At first, I wanted to be a sound engineer and went to an open house of a conservatory in The Hague, where they teach you to become a sound engineer. But I stopped playing the piano because I just hated my piano teacher, and they educated you first as a musician, and secondly as a technician. I later learned of the school of theatre techniques at the High School of Arts in Amsterdam. It was a much broader education - with sound, lighting, staging, mechanics, physics, dance, art, all kinds of stuff. It took several years to finish that education because I did some internships with touring companies and theaters. That's where I discovered I really loved working, and I let the schooling part go.”
“Some years later, they called and said, ‘Hey, you're still on our list of students able to finish their education - do you want to?’ I said, ‘Well, let's do that.' So, in 2006, I graduated after starting officially in 1996! But during those last few years, I was touring with all kinds of productions doing lighting, some stage management, tour management, and such. In 2007, I really dedicated myself to lighting - mainly for theatre events and productions. In Holland, we have a weird thing where we're touring every day to another city with our production. The touring is on a high frequency and geography. Within two hours drive, you can get anywhere in Holland.”
Pepijn says the first time he touched a lighting console was in 1998 on the veritable Compulite Animator 48. It was also when he started his own company, Theater Service. “It was a real dinosaur,” he laughs. “We could control 48 moving lights; I toured with a cabaret program in Holland, but eventually we had over 48 fixtures, so we had to say goodbye to that desk. That was at the time that the Hog III as well as the Vector were released. After a few minutes, I still couldn't get light to come out of the other desk, but I could make the Hog work in just a few seconds, so the technical supplier bought one of the first Hog III’s in Holland. That’s where my adventure started!”
“It was a beautiful, simple little console. I started doing programming for a big LD here in Holland named Marc Heinz. When the Hog 4 was launched, I decided I was going to stick with this platform. I eventually introduced my own workflow when I program productions so I always bring my own desk, give the board operator his own desk, and network them. It’s a fast and efficient way of programming theater shows when there’s not a lot of time to spare.”
The full-size Hog 4-18 remains one of Pepijn’s favorite Hog models. “It was a quite big investment in the day and wasn’t at all easy to get through a door, either! After three months, I said, ’It’s a super nice platform. It is going to work for me, but then I decided to buy a Road Hog; it was just the perfect sized desk for theater productions. Just run four or eight lines out on streaming ACN or Art-Net or whatever was suitable for the production that day. Of course, now it's a bit different story with modern DMX channels.”
Seven years ago, he was asked to work for famed Beatle tribute band The Analogues by their production manager and soon bought his first flagship Hog. More recently, van der Sanden has moved somewhat out of heavy touring and, through the years, has become a valuable training and information resource for Hog desks. Pepijn will still tour with Anneke van Giersbergen, whom he fondly describes as ‘one of the first metal queens’.
Fast forward to 2025, and van der Sanden is more comfortable with programming, creating, or co-creating lighting designs. Pepijn’s also invested in two ETC DP8000 processors, giving him access to a mammoth number of potential universes. And with theaters now using more LED moving lights, he says the ETC and Hog offers a myriad of solutions for control.
The Hog 4.0 OS opened a new world of color control for Pepijn. He adds that the ‘change type’ function of the board is truly a powerful addition to his workflow. And although Hog is known primarily as a live event console, he points out that ETC has ruled the theater world for many years, so the support from the company has been tremendous.
He says now he is on his ‘last career in rock’ and that his schedule is largely full with freelance programming gigs. “You're connected, and the phone rings, but in a nice way. I'm always jumping from one environment to another, and once or twice a year there's a new customer that I'm involved with, then we jump to another ship.”
For a lifetime Hog user, what else could possibly get Pepijn jazzed about Hog? Well perhaps, the official launch of the next generation of Hog hardware comes to mind! In closing, he comments, “With a new family of Hog hardware, the future of the platform has opened wide. The consistent hardware design of the family is a big step forward in ‘inter-desk-show-compatibility’. The future proof hardware opens possibilities to enhance the software with features that we as users have been asking for, but was not possible due to the older hardware. With exciting times like these, the new bandwidth of the Hog will bring these options to our favorite programming desk in the near future.”
