The Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau hosted the event where lighting designer John Lucksinger and production manager Chris Lisle worked with Bandit Lites to provide lighting for the A-List event dubbed as Swimville.
Swimville was held on Broadway with six bands performing a free show each day on Wednesday and Thursday. More than 15,000 people came out on the first day alone to see performances by Will Hogue, The Weeks, and Chris Young, and also to meet this year's SI models who were available to sign autographs and take photos.
Bandit provided gear for the grand entrance along with a lighting package for the performances. Later, the red carpet was rolled out in front of The Schermerhorn Symphony Hall where Nashville's rock star royalty, Kings of Leon, were slated to perform. It was there that super models Chrissy Teigan, Lilly Aldridge and SI swimsuit cover model Hannah Davis stopped to give televised interviews under a 20' 12' circle on 16' leg with MAC Auras for key light.
"The aura is a great fixture," Lucksinger said. "Nice even field with a big zoom. I mainly took the light, tipped it up, zoomed it all the way out, and it gave a great flood over the 16' round stage. Anywhere the people went there was front, side, and back light. It worked really well. There were also some Comer LED pars in the truss. I went with Comer because they are so small they fit inside of 12" truss."
Opposite of the interview "home base" was the "step and repeat" area, where everyone comes in and poses for photos, in addition to another smaller interview area. There Lucksinger used ETC S4 lekos for key light. "I put them on three different 14' tall pipes in order to get over the top of everyone walking around," he explained. "I also had to light the surrounding building and area. For that I went with GRN wash lights."
(Jim Evans)
