The BRDC Ball is held in a luxury marquee erected adjacent to the Members' Clubhouse on the Saturday evening of the Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix weekend. This year's event was particularly special, marking the launch of the new Grand Prix Circuit at Silverstone and the 60th anniversary of Formula 1 racing.
Personalities from the motor racing fraternity including Nigel Mansell OBE and BRDC President, Damon Hill OBE appeared on stage to talk about their experiences to the BBC's and ex-Radio Caroline's Johnnie Walker MBE.
A.C. Special Projects, a sister company of BRDC Rising Stars Programme Patron, A.C. Entertainment Technologies, was appointed to provide the Clubhouse's temporary architectural lighting installation. With limited site access time before and after the event, ACSP were keen to utilise LED lighting solutions that would minimise the set up time required without compromising the actual lighting scheme.
The 12,000 / 8,000 lumens output of the new Chroma-Q Color Force LED range provided ample coverage for washing the roof level canopy. In addition to delivering vivid saturates from the RGBA extended colour palette, the battens also reduced the number of separate fixtures required.
For the first floor level, which was turned into a Casino environment for the evening, ACSP specified the new Chroma-Q Color Charge battery powered, wireless DMX LED fixture to provide effects uplighting around the floor perimeter.The fixtures enabled the team to transform the room lighting in a matter of minutes and avoid running cabling across the balcony doorways.
In the garden area, ACSP used Chroma-Q Color Punch high output LED fixtures to uplight a number of trees and White Punch LED fixtures to provide 'daylight' illumination of various modern and vintage racing cars on display.
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Formula 1 racing, ACSP specified the Chroma-Q Color Web LED display to provide a temporary video effects screen along the Clubhouse garden perimeter. Video control was provided by Green Hippo using a Hippotizer media server and featured scrolling congratulatory messages, moving images and abstract patterns complementing the Clubhouse lighting scheme.
ACSP also used Pulsar ChromaSphere LED spheres mounted along the length of a wall in front of the Color Web to provide contrasting lighting to the video content. Also, A&O Falcon Flower xenon multi-beam effect lights were positioned on the Clubhouse roof to provide awards ceremony-style effects lighting as attendees arrived at the British Grand Prix Ball.
Lighting control was provided by a Jands Vista I3 console and featured various colour changing fades and chases complementing the moving content on the Color Web video screen.
Stuart Pringle, secretary of the BRDC commented, "A.C. Special Projects did an incredible job at the BRDC Ball. The Clubhouse was visible to all at Silverstone and our guests were greeted with a celebratory message which scrolled across the circuit fencing in the most incredible colours. It has become an annual traditional that those attending try and guess what the Clubhouse will look like when they come out of the marquee after dark - it's added an exciting element to the evening as well as incredible colour to our party."
(Jim Evans)
