Elation Proteus joins National Day celebration
- Details
A 108m cylindrical performance stage, lined with LED strips to form a tunnel and featuring portals at each end symbolizing the past and future, served as a dynamic platform for a parade of floats and massive cast of over 3,000 performers. A backstage staging area stretched nearly 2km before parading through the space and out the other end.
Es Devlin returned as co-creative director for the show, working with show producers People Creative. The organising committee of the 51st National Day Celebration was headed by creative executive producer Rawdha Al Qubasi and artistic director Ayesha Hadhir.
As the venue was an open-air environment, lighting fixtures required an IP rating and had to utilise LED technology to align with the show's commitment to sustainability. The lighting was predominantly powered by Elation, including 160 Proteus Lucius and 260 Proteus Maximus LED moving heads, 27 Proteus Rayzor 760 lights, 28 Proteus Rayzor Blade L battens, as well as 24 Elation KL Panels and other lighting elements. Encore supplied the complete lighting setup, including lighting fixtures, network, control, processing, trackers, wireless DMX, and work light.
“I needed outdoor rated fixtures because although the weather is generally good in Abu Dhabi, you just never know,” stated lighting designer Bruno Poet, who also turned to Elation’s Proteus line of IP65 luminaires to light last year’s 50th National Day Celebration. “I needed fixtures that were very reliable with a consistent quality of light across them. It was an easy choice to go back to the Proteus, they are such powerful, do everything waterproof lights. The Lucius and Maximus were absolutely the workhorses of the show.”
Each circular portal located at either end of the performance area served as a projection screen and provided a platform for visual storytelling. Lining each circle were 51 Proteus Lucius lights representing the 51 years since the rulers of seven Emirates came together to form the United Arab Emirates. The circle of Lucius fixtures were rigged at 90 degrees facing inwards on pipe curved to match the shape of the portal.
“It was a challenging position to hang lights and therefore hard to swap out so we wanted something reliable there,” Bruno stated. “I went with Lucius as they are a bit smaller than the Maximus and can do narrow beam looks or zoom wide for big washes. They worked very well and as far as colour matched the Maximus well, so it was very consistent.”
The Proteus Lucius and Proteus Maximus both house high centre-intensity white LED engines (6,500K) working with CMY colour mixing. Lucius fixtures located behind each portal door were used to light haze and backlight each entrance. The effect was to hide from the audience the rest of the procession lining up behind it.
Suspended above the audience were 60 Proteus Maximus lights on each side of the performance space, used as the primary lighting source for performances. Additional Maximus lights were placed at various locations to meet other lighting requirements. One of the big challenges, Bruno says, was that all of the performance area was covered in projection, which had to be timed perfectly with the constant flow of floats, props and performers, as well as music from a live orchestra.
Bruno comments, “Basically the whole stage and the portals at each end were projected onto so my challenge was to enhance the light on the performers and props without destroying the projection. For example, in the underwater section on marine life with lots of different fish travelling through the stage, being able to blend animated water effects from the Proteus lights with the projection was really useful. We were able to enhance the projection and highlight the performers without ruining the video which was quite important.”
Additional members of the lighting team included Max Narula and Johanne Jensen - associate lighting designers; Jon Barker, Max Narula & Fraser Walker - lighting programmers; and Dan Bond - D3 programmer. In addition to Encore, other production suppliers and consultants were Wonder Works, Stage One, Cundall Engineering, Al Laith, Creative Technology, Maestra, VK Scenic, Agora and Clair.
