The Microsoft Xbox 2014 media briefing is used as a platform to launch new games, as well as take a look at previously announced games. Lighting design for the event was handled by Emanuel Treeson of NYXdesign, who specializes in creating immersive experiences with light and has been designing projects for Xbox since the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005.
"For Xbox, I wanted a narrow beam fixture that could be placed in an expansive array but one where the LEDs are more spaced out than a typical Elation ELAR panel," he explains. "Our goal was to create the movement and pattern effects that you can get from an ELAR panel or other panel array fixture but with wider spacing that would flow around of our scenic design."
Treeson chose the ELAR Q1 colour changing Par light, which features a single 10W RGBW LED and are capable of emitting a wide palette of colours from saturates to more subtle pastels from a narrow 7-degree beam. As the main brand colour of Xbox, 'Xbox green' was used throughout the 90-minute live television programme, but there were many other colours used during the show as well with colour matching also an important must. "We used pretty much the full spectrum of what the light could produce," Treeson explains. "The colour palette in the cues was inspired by the artwork from the different games that were being demoed in the show.
"Because the ELAR's were used in a grid and that grid was the primary background for all of the close up shots, colour matching was critical. It was one of the criteria I looked at when considering the fixture. Months out, long before the order for the fixtures was placed, [Elation rental & production market manager] John Dunn demoed the fixture for me and at that time I looked really closely at how they matched - both for colour and response time. Then when the production units arrived at Illumination Dynamics, we again looked at the colour matching."
The ELAR Q1s were used to enhance the set from two locations, the first a grid of 100 fixtures on 25" centres that was located directly behind the Xbox logo, covering most of the upstage scenic; and the other on the set's travelling scenic walls, where 36 fixtures were used to create accents and wisps of green highlights on the set structure.
(Jim Evans)
