An elegant setting is essential to showcasing these automotive jewels, which is why LD James Schipper of Kinetic Lighting deployed 36 COLORado Batten 72 Tour fixtures from Chauvet Professional to wash the lavish drapery on the auction's stage. "This show is all about the cars, but our focus with the lighting design goes beyond the vehicles themselves," said Schipper. "We want to cover the surfaces around the vehicles with light, so we set a visual tone for the entire event. Having rich colour sweeps on the stage drapes was critical to creating the right ambience."
Schipper has been lighting the prestigious auction, which is presented by Gooding & Company, for 10 years. During this time he has worked closely with Denny Beaubien, the CEO and founder of Production Elements, the event producer for the Pebble Beach Auctions. "We're honoured that Denny has entrusted the lighting to us," said the LD. "His vision is to make constant enhancements to the event, so we're always looking for new ways of doing things. Thankfully, we're able to keep raising the bar higher, thanks to some good gear and talented team members like our production electrician David Strouse and programmer John McGuire."
This year, one of the new steps that Schipper and his team took was to replace the individual RGB LED fixtures that had been used to light the stage drapery with the RGBAW batten-style COLORado units. "For many years we had used the other fixtures placed on 32-inch centers for lighting the drapery," said Schipper. "The streaks of light we created with those fixtures were a signature look, but after a few years we wanted to have a smoother, more refined look in keeping with the overall atmosphere of the auction. After looking into several low-profile batten type fixtures, I selected the Batten 72 for the job."
Powered by 72 calibrated red, green, blue, white and amber LEDs and with five dimming curves, the COLORado Batten 72 Tour produces a wide range of colours, from soft pastels to saturated hues. Schipper took full advantage of this capability to create the appropriate backdrop for each of the luxury cars that were paraded on stage.
"The Chauvet fixtures were called upon to create a varied mix of colours," he said. "We continually changed the colour of the background to best complement and/or contrast the vehicle being auctioned on stage. As you can imagine, with almost 160 lots in the auction, we end up with many colour combinations. However, the bold vibrant colours - red, blue, and white - were used most. By blending the amber and white channels in the COLORados, we were able to get some nice subtle hues. I especially liked a certain 'champagne' colour we were able to create with the battens. It looked very elegant."
(Jim Evans)
