The Sunday Night Football opening sequence is the official introduction to America's prime time Sunday night programme and features Carrie Underwood for the third year running. Filmed in June on Stage 23 at Warner Brothers, Burbank, the Open was first broadcast nationwide on 13 September 2015, with weekly updates tailored to feature each Sunday's rival teams.
This year marked a style change - described as Nashville meets Hollywood - with the creation of a large virtual video backdrop and a new arrangement of the famous theme tune, Waiting All Day for Sunday Night, which Underwood performs in front of a live audience, amid real and projected appearances by top NFL players.
Underwood's performance takes place on a high-gloss, diamond-shaped stage against a black backdrop, which became a gigantic video screen through the magic of visual effects. This angular layout presented significant challenges for the lighting team. Director of photography, Chuck Ozeas, deferred the design of the concert lighting to Benoit Richard who was able to bring his rock and roll touring experience to bear on the theatrical lighting elements of the show.
To make the performers stand out against the overwhelming virtual backdrop, Richard created a dynamic floor package which incorporated 60 Ayrton MagicDot-R fixtures. MagicDot-R is the first 60W RGBW professional LED moving head, and uses a single collimated 94mm diameter optic to produce an intense 4.5° beam.
Thirty free-standing MagicDot-R units were installed just below stage level on a recessed drop-shelf which lined the two downstage edges of the diamond stage. Richard used them to project through the audience and bounce light off the front edge of the shiny stage surface.
A further 30 units were rigged around the diamond stage's upstage edges, 'yoked out' on 1.5ft vertical truss pipes which lifted them clear of the floor and orientated them straight out towards the audience. This enabled Richard to maximize the effect of the shiny stage surface without interfering with the black backdrop. "The rigging angle didn't affect the MagicDots' performance at all," he says. "I used the pan to create a continuous moving fan effect behind Carrie, making full use of the colour palette as well as the movement. On camera, the reflections in the stage surface gave the effect of a double row of MagicDots behind her as they moved in slinky curves, doubling the impact."
The Ayrton MagicDot-R fixtures were supplied for NFL's SNF Open shoot by VER and are distributed in the US exclusively by Morpheus Lights.
(Jim Evans)
