Amazing entertainment has become a tradition at the Orange Bowl, which in recent years has featured standout performances from the likes of Train, the Goo Goo Dolls, Kelly Clarkson, Kool & the Gang, Ciara and ZZ Top. This year, Grammy-winning country superstars Little Big Town did the game's halftime tradition proud with a nonstop high-energy seven-minute performance set against a dynamic lightshow featuring Nexus Aw 7x7 panels from Chauvet Professional.
Lighting designer Abbas Ritscher of The Design Oasis used 32 of the Nexus Aw 7x7 panels at the show, which was produced by ACT Productions, the Miami-based entertainment company that has produced the entertainment elements of the Orange Bowl's pre-game and halftime events for the past decade. Ritscher lined the back wall of the mid-field stage with the powerful LED panels and also positioned them over the vomitorium (vom) walkways leading into the field.
From these positions, the DMX-controlled panels covered the entire field and much of the stadium with sharp crisp beams of warm 2800K white light that moved rapidly in vertical waves. "The panels gave us all the punch we needed for this very energized show," said Ritscher. "They had the output to cover a very large area, and colour temperature was great for television."
Another exciting visual element of the halftime show was the soaring column of colorized fog rising behind the stage. "The colours and the fog played off well against the sharp white beams of the Nexus Aws," said Ritscher. "It gave us a very complete and balanced lightshow."
The fog was provided by six Geyser RGB foggers, which shot red, green and blue shafts of LED light through a voluminous column of white water-based fog to colorize it. Ritscher arranged the Geyser units behind the halftime stage. At key points in the Little Big Town performance, the Geyser RGB foggers sent towering multi-coloured columns of fog streaming over the stage. As these columns spread out over much of the field, they created an aura of festiveness and fantasy around the performance, adding to its appeal.
On a more practical level, Ritscher appreciated the Nexus Aw 7x7 units' easy rigging system that simplified panel alignment. "There's always a level of time pressure when you do an event like this," he said. "The panels were very easy to put together and take apart, so that was a big time saver. We prepared for this for months, set everything up in hours and had the show run for only minutes. It was an experience I wouldn't trade for the world."
(Jim Evans)
