For the second year in a row, Rosenberg lit Broadway Bares. The revue is one of the many Broadway charity events coordinated by BC/EFA and took place at Roseland Ballroom. This year's theme was New York Strip. Rosenberg explained that the show was "a dance concert of 200 actor/dancers that came together under several different choreographers; each number was its own short story that this year centered around some NYC theme and always involved nakedness - in some form."
One of Rosenberg's main concerns was time so he turned to Prelite for previsualization support. "Prelite was great for this project because our time in the venue was limited. We could get some very accurate focus points laid out and some rough cueing done. By being able to have two days in the Prelite studio we virtually tripled our programming time. Without Prelite, we would have been much more behind schedule than we already were. It was also a great time to get familiar with the rig - so we were already warmed up by the time we got to Roseland - we hit the ground running."
Rosenberg found the atmosphere of the Prelite studio offered the right balance to get some focused work done: "I really enjoy how helpful Prelite is. We never feel as though we can't ask a question or get a problem solved. It is amazing to have someone with Rodd's [McLaughlin] skills a few paces away though they are also great at giving the perfect amount of creative space. Every designer needs privacy to experiment and make mistakes so it's nice not to feel like we are being watched over. I was pleased with the results of our time in the studio. We learned last year to not spend a lot of the time with colour and gobo; this year we focused on preset focuses and cue structure and it paid off." Rosenberg's design was well received and the entire event paid off for the charity, raising a record-breaking $659,500 to benefit BC/EFA.
Whereas Rosenberg enjoyed the atmosphere of the NY studio, LD John Featherstone took his Prelite services to the venue using a Prelite Onsite system supplied by the Prelite SF studio when he recently lit the opening ceremonies at Soldier Field in Chicago for the seventh quadrennial Gay Games Sports and Cultural Festival. The games, staged in July, featured world-class athletes competing in 30 sports from more than 70 countries.
Featherstone, principal with Lightswitch, lit the opening ceremony for the Games: "It was a fairly traditional opening ceremony - a parade of athletes, a number of good-sized production numbers to support the overall themes of the events, a couple of solo performers, lighting of the flame; all the requisite requirements for an opening ceremony. One of the advantages of using a Prelite system with a project of this scale is that in a stadium event, there are so many different perspectives that by using previsualization, it gives you a really good opportunity to get an understanding how the lighting system is working from other vantage points."
(Lee Baldock)
