Seven minutes for assembly and disassembly. Tell your install crew.
The term “entertainment lighting” describes production lighting for theatres, films, television shows, concert tours, discotheques, exhibitions, awards ceremonies and more. Each year, and with each notable event, the entertainment lighting field and its countless special effects seem to further erupt. Today, it seems, no worthwhile events are without such smoke-and-mirror spectaculars.
Like her or not, Madonna put on a spectacular Superbowl halftime show, one that would fascinate anyone with even a mild understanding of Ohm’s law, because the electronics, lighting, electronics, projections and assembly were truly amazing. Most advanced, I think, was the projection system that created the animated, 3-D images that prefaced the stage area.
The Moment Factory’s (Montreal) team of 12 multimedia artists created the 3-D projections. This crew collaborated with Bruce Rodgers, the show’s production designer, and lighting designer Al Gurdon, a Cirque du Soleil team, plus Madonna herself, and dozens of other teams that designed and programmed the show
effects.
Interestingly, these participating lighting teams, although unheralded in the everyday world, are entertainment-industry famous for their stage and event lighting skills. They often work together on the same project. For example, Madonna’s halftime stage builder, All Access Staging & Productions’ (Los Angeles) resume also includes the Grammys, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the Michael Jackson Memorial and the MTV Video Music Awards.
-->Moment Factory and Tribe Inc.’s Bruce Rogers worked mutually on many of those projects. Rogers designed Madonna’s cross-shaped stage. The criterion: To present amazing – and unfailing -- lighting dynamics, with seven minutes for assembly and disassemble (on and off field).
The stage comprised 58 numbered, arrayed and synchronized carts, each individually equipped with LED-lamped tiles, projection systems, spots, step and enclave lighting and other installed, electronic devices. Several contained hydraulic lifts, to elevate the entertainers during the show’s prime moments.
The actual stage installation consumed five minutes, not seven, and, get this -- the install crew, some 400 bodies that carried gear, pushed carts or plugged in lamp assemblies -- shared the space with the incoming and outgoing talent.
They must have had traffic cops.
The halftime lighting inventory comprised approximately 900 lights and light-related items – consoles, lamps, floods, fixtures, strobes, LED blocks, foggers, hazers, spotlights and flame devices.
All lighting was software driven and cued to trigger at the exact moments, once the show began.
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