Staged across five venues, the championship's main events were held at the Edward Jones Dome, home of the St. Louis Rams. New Orleans-based entertainment design and production firm, Solomon Group, was asked to light not only the ceremonies and competitions, but also the concert that capped off the weekend - which it did successfully with the help of Martin Professional's versatile lighting fixtures.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) hosts several events throughout the year that target elementary and high school students. The annual championship is the culmination of dozens of regional qualifying rounds throughout the world. Solomon Group also produced eight regional events in addition to the championship, which Matt Foucheaux, Solomon Group's Director of Production Design, describes as much more dramatic than the relatively straightforward regional productions.
"We mainly relied on simple PAR cans at the regionals, but our client wanted more pageantry at the championship, which introduced a new, Olympic-style event model," said Foucheaux. "Martin's MAC Quantum Wash was our workhorse for the entire weekend. We put it on double-duty for lighting the competitions as well as the concert performers onstage."
For the competitions, Foucheaux's primary concern was finding a fixture that would be compatible with the robots' sensors. Additionally, the lights were needed to make the competitions visible to everyone in the stadium while adding a sense of drama to the matches. The MAC Quantum Wash, like many Martin products, features a flicker-free LED bulb that did not interfere with the remote commands sent to the robots. Foucheaux praised the MAC Quantum Wash's colour temperature and bright whites, which he says were ideal for illuminating the eight playing fields in the stadium.
"Once the competitions were finished, all we needed to do was flip the MAC Quantum Washes around toward the stage for the closing ceremony to soak the entire stadium in colour and movement," said Foucheaux. "If we had used PAR rigs, we would've had to climb up and refocus everything manually."
The MAC Quantum Washes, which were hung about 40ft above the ground floor, were complemented by a host of other Martin fixtures including the MAC Viper Profile, MAC Viper AirFX, MAC Aura, MAC III Performance and the RUSH MH 3 Beam, which Foucheaux sees as vastly superior to similar products from other vendors.
"We own a ton of RUSH MH 3 fixtures but I had never applied them on this scale," said Foucheaux. "Out of the 76 used, we didn't have one problem running continuously from Wednesday afternoon to Saturday night. Their brightness, colour and speed are remarkable."
(Jim Evans)
