The Opening Ceremony, which took place in the 22,500-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium at New York's Flushing Meadows, was lit by Christien Methot. It featured an explosive performance of Are You Gonna Go My Way from Lenny Kravitz who brought in LD Bryan Barancik to design the lighting for his performance.
Barancik chose to relate his design back to the song's iconic music video. The original video, which is still considered outstanding 20 years after it was first released, featured an enormous overhead matrix of light bulbs. Barancik wanted to incorporate a similar aesthetic into the show to tie in with the anniversary of the song. He chose Ayrton MagicPanel fixtures as the solution to provide the power and creativity needed to echo this in front of the massive stadium and television audiences, and to punch through the intensity of the large rig of ceremony lighting fixtures.
"It was critical to give an animated background behind the band, especially since the wall of the tennis court was only a few feet upstage of the band, and quite unattractive," says Barancik. "We erected six truss towers each with 4 MagicPanel units mounted to the downstage edge which comprised the majority of the aesthetic both for camera and the live audience."
The MagicPanel units were then used as powerful and eye-catching feature lighting throughout the set, chasing colours and graphic elements and being used as audience blinders, whilst making good use of the MagicPanel's continuous rotating pan and tilt capabilities.
Barancik chose the MagicPanel fixtures after being shown them earlier this year by Keith Bennett of Morpheus Lights. "I wanted to use them the moment I saw them, and this was the perfect opportunity," says Barancik. "The MagicPanel units really were the ideal fixture for the job: the combination of pixel mapping effects, DMX programming, and the fixture's own internal effects gave us an arsenal of options to play with. In the end, we only used a few in the final programming - outstandingly done by Christien's programmer Jason Baeri - to ensure things looked good on screen and live."
The MagicPanel fixtures were supplied to PRG by Ayrton's exclusive US distributor, Morpheus Lights, for whom Barancik is full of praise. "Keith Bennett and the team at Morpheus are really going out of their way to do a superb job with service and support," he says. "Phone calls and emails were always answered timely, professionally, and helpfully. It's a pleasure working with them."
(Jim Evans)
