R24 Scores at Superbowl 44 + the Brit Awards

ISSUE 29 /March 2010

R24 scores at superbowl 44 + the Brit Awards

If you are one of the few who weren’t planted in front of the TV on The Halftime Show has gotten rave reviews from all corners of the the evening of February 7 watching Super Bowl XLIV, you’ve at world. Even for people that aren’t American-football fans, every- least seen footage of the spectacular halftime show featuring The one enjoys a good production. OK, and the commercials. ;) Who, accompanied by an astonishing light and video show. With 106 million viewers watching The New Orleans Saints’ victory over Additional Super Bowl XLIV Credits Indianapolis, Super Bowl XLIV became the most-watched program Executive Producer – Ricky Kirshner in US television history, according to the Nielsen Company. Directed by Hamish Hamilton Executive in Charge of Production – Rob Paine Production Designer – Bruce Rodgers Screens and Graphics Producer – Lee Lodge Lighting Directors – Rich Gorrod, Bob Barnhart, Dave Grill Lighting Programmers – Michael “Oz” Owen, Peter Radice Video Content Programmer – Jason Rudolph Staging Supervisors- Tony Hauser; Cap Spence

R24 wins big at Brit Awards

wysiwyg was also a big winner at the 2010 Brit Awards, held at Lon- don’s Earls Court on 16 February 2010. Another stunning design by Lighting Designer Al Gurdon, with wysiwyg by Miguel Ribeiro. The Super Bowl Halftime Show has some of the most stringent requirements in the business. Setup occurs in front of a packed stadium – in this case nearly 75,000 in the Sun Life Stadium in Miami, Florida – in just under a mere 8 minutes!

With this sort of timeline, pre-production is not a luxury – it’s a necessity! wysiwyg to the rescue!

Notably amongst the myriad of lighting fixtures shipped in for the event were 120 Vari*lite VL3500, 26 Falcon 6K and 7Ks, and nearly 300 Chroma Q Color Blocks, just to name a few. Another attention-grabber was the enormous stage floor created with 3055 Barco MiStrips and using Green Hippo’s VideoMapper for the Artists performing live included Lady Gaga (pictured), Kasabian, stunning visuals at the heels of the band. Lily Allen, a special Dizzee Rascal and Florence & The Machine collaboration, plus Robbie Williams - who walked away with this Lighting Designer Al Gurdon placed lighting not only surrounding year’s Outstanding Contribution to Music Award. the stage, but up in the poles surrounding the field and in the balco- nies up in the seats to incorporate movement and color to the entire stadium. 300 Chroma-Q Color Block fixtures were added to the mix, used with DMX control or pixel-mapped to the video on the stage floor. “With the strong visual backdrop of the floor, we added a visual dynamic to the vertical space in the terracing of the audience,” says Gurdon, who placed rows of Color Blocks around the stadium.

The wysiwyg design was created by Miguel Ribeiro from PRG. Miguel explained how the wysiwyg Library in particular was help- ful. “We were using approximately 300 Color Blocks which were not originally in the Library but I called Peter Debreceni, Library Manager at CAST and he built the fixtures within 24 hours. He was really Gurdon’s particular favourite performance was that of Lady Gaga. amazing. I’ve used wysiwyg on some huge projects lately including Watch on YouTube: U2’s 360° tour and the Brit Awards – I know I can trust the results.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny4UUqWUbTI