That's why leading Slovakian lighting designer Martin Kubanka decided to use 100 Robe Robin Pointes at the heart of his lighting rig for the recent East vs West KHL All Stars match at the Slovnaft Arena in Bratislava.
Kubanka's brief was to highlight the music and various mapped video projections appearing on the ice during the 22 minute pre-show multimedia son et lumiere. He created an atmospheric enhancement to the video that highlighted touches of Slovakian folklore and history while celebrating the firt time that Bratislave has hosted a KHL All Stars event.
The media interest in these matches is intense. All KHL matches are broadcast on KHL.tv - part of Russian satellite operator NTV Plus, owned by the Gazprom Media empire.
In addition to this, the All Stars game was broadcast on Russia2, the country's primary sports channel which reaches an average of 51.5% of Russian city dwellers and around 15.6% of those living in rural areas; as well as Hungary's Chello Central Europe Sport1 and Sport2 channels reaching another 15 central European countries.
Other channels showing the action included Sweden's Viasat, US global cable and satellite network ESPN, Canada's French language specialty sports channel RDS and more - so with a stupendously large global audience - the pressure was really on for Kubanka to pull off an amazing opening show.
It was also his first time lighting the ice hockey extravaganza, although he has worked in the arena before, but that was some time before its complete refurbishment in 2011.
In addition to the 100 Pointes, Kubanka - a big believer in 'round numbers' - also utilized 18 x Robe Robin LEDWash 600 and 12 x Robin LEDWash 1200s among other fixtures in the high-impact design. Over 120m of trussing was installed in the roof to accommodate all the various show production technology - sound, lighting, video and lasers.
Thirty-six of the Pointes were positioned on special podiums dotted around the bleacher seating and the other 64, together with the LEDWash 600 and 1200s, were hung on the overhead trusses.
The Pointes were the workhorse lights of the rig and used to create all the major lighting effects. Kubanka specified them so he could make full use of their multi-functional capabilities, and he used this to the max - swapping them between wash, spot, beam and effects units.
"In my long lighting design career," declares Kubanka. "The Pointe is one of the greatest products with its incredible set of features offering so many possibilities".
Kubanka used a grandMA2 full size for lighting control. The programming was very intense as they had only two days to create a complex show which was triggered by timecode from the audio track.
Q-99 supplied all the moving heads and the audio system for the opening show which was directed by Tomas Eibner with Vladimir Durcansky as the DoP.
Team West beat Team East 18 to 16, clocking up a record number of goals for an All Stars match.
(Jim Evans)
