While the game itself left Denver fans a bit bored, the halftime show proved to be the most exciting part of the day. Super Bowl XLVIII was the most watched television programme in US history with 111.5m viewers while the halftime performance was the most watched in the history of the Super Bowl drawing in a record 115.3m viewers, passing the record 114m who watched Madonna perform two years earlier.
The Super Bowl Halftime Show has some of the most stringent requirements in the business. Setup occurs in front of a packed stadium and in this case nearly freezing conditions - all in just under a mere eight minutes. With this sort of timeline, pre-production is not a luxury - it's a necessity. A tight load-in and no retakes means the plan must be flawless so pre-production means previsualization. No surprise that wysiwyg has been the tool of choice for the last five years.
Lighting designer Robert Barnhart from Full Flood designed the exciting halftime show featuring Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He worked with Tom Thompson from Prelite on the previsualization, who used wysiwyg R32 to realize Barnhart's vision. The 130 linear yard design (119m) included almost 1000 fixtures, 2000 feet (609m) of LED tape, a moving drum set, four on-stage lifts, video and 80,000 PixMob hats for the audience.
wysiwyg R32 was used to bring the halftime show to life long before the whistle blew. Thompson and Lighting Director Pete Radice did pre-programming at PRG in early January. Once the project team was on site in New Jersey, while they continued programming on the previz system throughout the week prior to the show, most of the time they were able to use the real rig.
Radice explains, "We continued on wysiwyg while in New Jersey. We set up the system as soon as it rolled off the truck and continued on. By the time we got to the stadium we had most of the cue structure in place, but didn't have a time code track yet. Once we got that, I was able to work on that through our previz system, while the guys were doing the real work in the cold and snow. I also continued using the previz system after we were fully setup, so the crew could wring out the system without me bothering them while I took care of cue notes via previz.
"Tom was great with handling changes for us. He even gave me control of the stage lifts so I could see the Color Blocks mounted on their faces, and of the PAR-46 trees so they could be seen at the appropriate time in the show. I would say the whole wysiwyg setup was well worth it. We arrived at the stadium with a patched system, focus positions built, and a cue structure in place. Not too long ago, that process wouldn't have begun until we arrived at the stadium."
The lights creating the audience backdrop behind the stage were set on 4 levels - field level plus 3 levels on the audience balcony rails. Clay Paky Sharpys were located in both the balcony levels as well as in back of the LED panels behind the performers on stage. 220 Magic Panels were located on stage left and right in tight clusters with 12 Clay Paky B-Eye fixtures located on both sides next to the stage.
PRG 4000 Spot fixtures were placed in the stadium catwalk upstage and downstage. Lighting was controlled by a PRG 676. The Magic Panels were fed video content by video director Jason Rudolph while the pan and tilt was done by Radice. The information was merged in custom PRG boxes and viewed in wysiwyg.
The 80,000 PixMob hats in the audience were used to show video effects using people as individual pixels. While PixMob used their own simulator for the video, Rudolph ran that content through wysiwyg while controlling video on a grandMA to cue with the lights.
Barnhart said, "Working wi
