Held 21-30 November at the LA Convention Centre, the Los Angeles Auto Show is one of the most influential auto shows in the world and production companies Christie Lites and TLS Productions, Inc. played a major role in the event, delivering nearly 2000 Elation Design PARs to light cars and scenic elements for some of the world's top car brands.
TLS Productions, Inc. has provided for the automotive industry for nearly 60 years and relied heavily on the Design PAR 575 for the Toyota, Lexus and Scion booths at the LA Auto Show.
"The Elation Design PAR 575s are an integral part of what we do at any of the auto shows we are a part of," said Carl Kedzierski, head of marketing & new business development at TLS Productions, Inc. "They are a must for us due to their ease of use, the endless benefits of their remote-focus capabilities, and their high lumen output, which is paramount to the work we do at auto shows such as LAAS."
In addition to their lighting production work, TLSP also provided the audio for those booths as well as their corresponding press events. TLSP also provided and installed the audio elements for the Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge and Ram booths.
Lighting design on the Toyota, Lexus and Scion booths was by Arnold Serame. He commented, "When it comes to automotive lighting, there are so many different body types and so many different amounts of reflective flake in the paint that at times, to optimize the way a vehicle looks, you want to take sharp angles on the vehicle. Other times you want flat lighting. On the show floor, the Design PARs let you try different approaches in a really efficient amount of time."
The Design PAR has a 575W MSR lamp and the lensing of a Source 4 PAR in a reliable moving yoke setup. From a design point of view, Arnold says the Design PARs fill that perfect role of a remote focus Daylight PAR. "Focuses that used to take days, literally, now take a day," he says. "More than that, we have much more flexibility with the Design PARs to really fine tune the focus on the vehicles.
Christie Lites again played a big role at LAAS and turned to its extensive inventory of Design PARs to light many of the top automakers' booths. "The fact that the Design PAR allows you to remotely focus the booth from a console is a huge advantage," says Chris Wasilauskas, lighting division technical director at Christie client Creative Technology, who used the fixture on the Kia (136+) and Audi (140+) booths.
While Creative Technology has been using the Design PARs on the Kia booth for several years, they are new to Audi. "We first used them in Audi at the NY show last April, where they were a hit, and they are now the standard for that booth in the US," Chris says. "Previously we were using conventional 575W daylight PARs. I was able to convince the client to make the swap to the Design PARs because of how difficult the press changeovers had become."
(Jim Evans)
