Canada - The Big Air Show ski/snowboarding event at the Blue Mountain Resort in Collingwood, Ontario, featured a fast moving and colourful lighting design created with Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Production Service Industries (PSI).
Lighting designer Andrew Dawson and production manager/co-designer Matt Chambers lined each side of the 200ft landing with five towers, separated by about 50ft. Each tower had three Color STRIKE M motorized wash-strobes and a single Rogue Outcast 2X Wash on top.
Drawing on the intense output and colour rendering prowess of these fixtures, the designers created a series of distinct and colourful looks for the 20-to-30 skier and snowboarder jumpers who participated every night.
“We broke our colour combinations down into a few segments,” said Dawson. “This year's show featured a ‘competition moment’ between the skiers and snowboarders. Each team had its own colour: red for skiers, and blue for snowboarders. We wanted to tie in those rich, saturated colours throughout the design. Then, during the ‘freestyle’ jump moments, we had built combinations of complementary colours to change up the looks and vibe of the show. We achieved a lot of this with pixel effects from the Color STRIKE Ms.”
The energy from the lighting design was felt not only during those jump moments but throughout the evening. “Each night the event ended with a train of all jumpers, this was a spectacle in itself,” said Chambers. There was also an intense intro moment every night, featuring EDM music and a vividly coloured lightshow.”
“We busked and cue stacked the intro, using a lot of saturated reds and blues, which the Chauvet fixtures did perfectly,” said Dawson. “I was thrilled with how well the Color STRIKE M acted as my Swiss army knife.’ I used the fixture in max channel mode utilising it as a wash, for eye candy effects, in addition to using it as a strobe.”
Dawson and Chambers needed to conjure up a range of effects to keep pace with all the activities at the event, which combined theatrical elements, comedy skits, and stunts by skiers and snowboarders, to engage the big crowd on multiple levels.
