Elation and Thunder City transform Tampa centre
- Details
When Thunder City Pro took on the challenge of revamping the centre’s lighting, they strategically selected Elation Fuze SFX LED Spot FX luminaires and Rayzor 760 wash effect moving heads to take centre stage.
Justin Stancil, president of Thunder City, highlighted the upgrade: “Previously, two spotlight operators would come in and do some ballyhoos for team intros and that was about the extent of the lighting. They’ve gone from a very limited system to a nice centre-hung rig of very versatile, dynamic lights. They’ve been ecstatic about it and both the university and the public have taken notice.”
The Yuengling Centre, located on the University of South Florida's main campus, is a multipurpose facility with a seating capacity of up to 10,500. It hosts a range of events, including the University of South Florida's basketball and volleyball games. Thunder City Pro serves as the venue's go-to production partner, responsible for live broadcasts, lighting for sporting events, and control room management.
The Fuze SFX's versatile capabilities, combining spot, beam, and wash functions, perfectly aligned with the dynamic range of events hosted at the centre, offering a wide spectrum of lighting effects to match every occasion. To ensure the right lighting fixture for the venue however, Thunder City arranged a shoot-out to compare the Fuze SFX with Elation’s Proteus Lucius and Proteus Maximus luminaires.
Justin Stancil noted: “Obviously, there is going to be a difference in output, especially with colours between the fixtures, however we were quite astonished that there wasn’t as much of a difference as we expected. The SFX still rocked, even with the game lights on, and white, yellow, and green (USF colours) was super visible.” Each Fuze SFX fixture is equipped with custom USF gobos.
Complementing the Fuze SFX, the Rayzor 760's high-speed movement and intense output provide the impactful wash and captivating eye-candy lens effects needed to captivate the audience. Justin praised the background SparkLED effect in the Rayzors and highlighted their versatility. “I love the SparkLED effect. We do ballyhoos and breaks over the audience with a time-coded intro, but we can also zoom them all the way out and bring the seven RGBW pixels down to two percent and throw in the SparkLEDs for eye-candy toward the audience without affecting play.”
Recognising the paramount importance of safety in such a dynamic environment, Thunder City engineered a safety-redundant T-Bar rigging system to suspend the Fuze and Rayzor fixtures from the centre-hung jumbotron, a custom rigging solution that adhered to the highest safety standards.
Enhancing the immersive experience is a pair of Magmatic Sidewinders, high-velocity CO2 simulator fog machines placed 20ft inside an intro tunnel that teams run through prior to each game. Pointed outwards, the dense fog fills the tunnel and billows out onto the court as the players emerge. Using a quick-dissipating Atmosity fluid from Magmatic, the fog then hangs long enough to provide a thin blanket of haze for the pregame intros but then quickly dissipates for a clear, unobstructed view for the start of the game.
Tying all of these elements together is an Obsidian NX2 lighting console with remote X-Net control, offering efficient but complex programming of lighting effects.
