"This was my first year with BlizzCon and right away I knew I would be in for a challenge," said Serame. "In our initial discussion about the event, Blizzard Entertainment made it clear that they wanted to really step up the production values over previous years. When BlizzCon first started it was about one-quarter of the size it is today, but the lighting, sound and video elements had not grown to support it. This year we had to step it up."
At BlizzCon all the activities revolve around Blizzard Entertainment's three video games Diablo, StarCraft, and World of Warcraft with exhibit halls dedicated specifically to each title. There would also be one Main Stage hall used for panel discussions, an awards ceremony, and the events closing night concert featuring Tenacious D. Plus, for those who could not attend BlizzCon in person, event organizers had one HD Pay-Per-View broadcast along with three live Internet streams covering the event in its entirety.
Serame continued, "With so many elements affecting the lighting design for this event, we started the design process by focusing specifically on each game title first and then let the rest fall into place. For the individual game halls, we wanted to make sure that each had its own identity through a consistent color scheme and gobo pattern, but then we also had to make sure that the lights we used would give us the ideal color temperature for both the HDTV and Internet feeds. So when we factored these things together, it made perfect sense to go with Vari*Lite luminaires."
To gather all the lights necessary, Serame worked with authorized dealer 4-Wall LA to bring together 100 VL3500 Spot, 30 VL3500 Wash, 50 VL3000 Spot, and 20 VL2500 Spot luminaires.
"It was awesome working with 4-Wall. I love their real-time inventory tracking between multiple shops because as we were finalizing the plot and making the design choices, fixture count swings from one plot to the next could be significant. With their tracking software, 4-Wall could track between all their shops to help me find the ideal package which helped keep our shipping costs down by using the inventory that was available on the West coast."
(Jim Evans)
