This year's edition of the event, which has raised well over a $1m annually since it began in 1999, also brought something else to the area - big name entertainment in the form of Lady Antebellum. The multi-Grammy winning, platinum recording artists performed before over one thousand invited guests at the Rhode Island Convention Centre, illuminated by a zesty lightshow created by Derek Iorfida, using a variety of Legend moving head fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
"This is a major event throughout the state," said Iorfida, president of JDI Productions in Johnston, Rhode Island. "The gala at the convention tops off a charity golf tournament that generates a lot of local attention, so we want a design with impact - something that sparkles."
Contributors to the charity classic joined executives from the 7,600-store CVS Caremark chain at the gala, which featured dining and dancing. However, Iorfida didn't approach this project as a "corporate" lighting design. "At the end of the day this was a concert," he said. "The invited guests saw this as a Lady Antebellum concert, and that's the kind of atmosphere that we wanted to create."
Aside from creating this atmosphere on the Rhode Island Convention Centre Stage, Iorfida also extended it to the dance floor with the help of 34 Legend 230SR Beam and Legend 412 LED moving head fixtures. "We positioned the Legends upstage, mid-stage and on truss towers over the dance floor to cover the entire area with concert-like colourful, vivid beams," he said. "The intensity and output of the Legend fixtures really can't be matched by anything in their class. They're also very fast. We swept beams over the dance floor to energize the crowd."
Iorfida used a Road Hog 4 console to program the CVS gala lightshow. "We created a lot of chases and dynamic scenes for this event just as we would a touring concert," he said. "The 230SR Beam's zooming, beam shaping and split color capabilities were key to helping us achieve what we wanted with this design.
"The client was very happy with how everything came together," said Iorfida. "We gave people an evening they're going to remember for a long time - and that felt good."
(Jim Evans)
