Elation lights Toast to Living Well gala
- Details
Stage Directions Inc. was responsible for event staging and media production, working for client ZT Wealth and the Altus Foundation. “We worked closely with the client, as well as décor, and helped contribute ideas to the overall event flow,” states Trent Blake, executive vice president of Stage Directions Inc. “Our main purpose was to maximize the environmental aspects of the event, what the attendees feel, what they see, and what they hear. We used scenic design elements, lighting, video, lasers, and audio to create the appropriate effects that the client wanted.”
The event, which took place at Hilton Americas Hotel on 9 December and attracted 1,500 attendees, had a ‘high-end futuristic’ theme but still required a corporate gala feel, according to Blake.
Lighting needed to work overtime as the event included a fashion show, CEO presentations and awards, a band, DJ, illusionist, after-party and, of course, a seated dinner. Stage Directions Inc. contracted freelance lighting designer Elliot Matson to light the show.
Guests entered the event to a 10-minute timecoded show, which Matson says raised the wow factor as soon as they walked through the door. Immediately after that was a fashion show, then presentations, then dinner. “The illusionist performed during dinner and had a lot of specific requirements for lighting so that the illusions were effective and dramatic,” Matson said. “We then went into alternating DJ and band sets for the rest of the night, so the rig also had to be easy to busk for those.”
That flexible rig was made up of 180 intelligent fixtures, the majority of which were Elation: 13 Platinum Beam 5R Extreme moving heads, 12 ACL 360 Bar LED moving bar effects, 11 Rayzor Q12 LED moving heads, 30 warm-white Lumina Matrix panels, 7 Lumina Matrix Strips, 30 SixPar 200IP LED Par lights, four Cuepix Blinder WW2 white light blinders, and six of Elation’s new Artiste DaVinci LED moving head spots.
Mounted on a downstage truss, the Artiste DaVinci luminaire was the base of most of the effects in the show. “The number of possible projections allowed me to create very unique scenes for each speaker and allowed me to get the specific looks the illusionist wanted,” Matson says of the CMY and graphics moving head luminaire with 300W LED engine and 7° to 48° zoom.
The DaVinci's and Platinum Beams were mounted above the stage and used for aerial effects and spotting or washing areas on stage and around the room while the Rayzor Q12's were hung around the room to create a fully immersive experience. The ACL 360 Bars worked from side verticals, which increased the perceived size of the stage and filled in the gaps between the stage and the projection screens.
In between the ACL 360 Bars were six lines of Lumina Matrix Panels used for pixelmapping and blinder effects. In the air hung several Lumina Strips and Cuepix WW2 blinders while SixPar 200's (some IP) were used as a supplemental stage wash, as well as backlight, strobe, and blinder.
(Jim Evans)
