LOS ANGELES — LD Todd Roberts of Visions Lighting, LLC used 20 Elation Professional 189W Platinum Beam 5Rs for the L.A. Rising concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum, headlined by Rage Against the Machine, and also recommended them to light Coldplay’s performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which was staged in a tennis stadium and shot from overhead by a blimp.
Powered by the Philips MSD Platinum 5R lamp, the fixture proved not only a worthy match for the big open-air spaces, but a good choice for budgetary reasons as well.
“I had a proposal for the L.A. Rising show that called for a lot of larger, higher-powered fixtures,” Roberts said. But that was before the client got the cost estimates to install and the power to run all the lights. “It became cost prohibitive,” Roberts noted.
“The production manager came back to me and asked if I had any ideas about something that would be less expensive and still give them a bang for the buck, and I knew they would be perfect,” Roberts added, noting that he had been impressed by a demo of the Platinum Beam 5Rs.
Measuring 14.1 by 13.2 by 18.5 inches and weighing 34.2 lbs., the versatile Platinum Beam 5R is designed to produce a concentrated searchlight-type beam comparable in brightness to larger, higher-wattage fixtures, while offering advantages in terms of labor and total power requirements as well.
“The stagehands could literally carry them up the steps, one in each hand. Each side of the Coliseum was powered off three 20-amp circuits, which made it one 5-pole cable run,” noted Roberts, who used 20 of the units at the festival to across the crowd like searchlights as sirens heralded the introduction of the show. After the intro, their beams served as a “ceiling of light” around the top of the stadium.
Later, when Roberts was approached to handle lighting for an appearance by Coldplay on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he also suggested the Platinum Beam 5R . “The Kimmel show brought in Stan Crocker to handle the TV side of the project. He came to me and specified (a larger fixture), and I explained how I had just used the Platinum Beams at L.A. Rising and they were awesome. So they were up to trying them out.”
The big challenge for the Coldplay performance was to produce beams that would appear bright enough for a televised overhead shot of the stadium taken from a blimp. “The idea was to get maximum beamage for the blimp shot,” said Roberts. Here again, 20 Platinum Bea 5R units were used, positioned on top of the roof structure and around the perimeter of the tennis stadium.
The feedback from Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s production staff was identical to that at L.A. Rising. “They were blown away,” said Roberts, noting the comparable brightness and features at a much lower price.
For more information, please visit www.elationlighting.com.
