LEXINGTON, KY – It was a capacity crowd at Rupp Arena Oct. 16 as the University of Kentucky’s Wildcats took the court for their annual Big Blue Madness. The exhibition basketball game marks the first ‘official’ practice, and consists of grand spectacles, lasers, fireworks and stunning lighting provided by Bandit Lites.
More details from Bandit (www.BanditLites.com):
Bandit has provided the lighting for Big Blue Madness since 2011, and every year the team works to outdo the year before, with this year being no different. Lighting designer Aaron Swetland worked to create a design that both filled the massive stadium and light the basketball court. The result was an enormous eight point star design with circle truss nestled in the middle covered in hundreds of moving lights.
“When you do a concert, you do 60 by 40 area, but Big Blue is huge, so we used a ton of wash fixtures like VL 3500 washes over the court to give a big fat beam look,” said Swetland.
Lighting equipment included Mac 2000 profiles and washes, Coemar Infinity washes, Chauvet Legend 230SR Beams, Color Kinetics lwBlasts, GRN Par 64 and GRN washes, with two Granda MA 1 full consoles.
With Kentucky’s colors consisting of white and blue, Swetland was instructed to only use those colors in the light show.
“You’re trying to create a high energy environment using a palate that I would traditionally consider more ballad like,” said Swetland. Using Bandit’s own specialty GRN Moving Washes, he was able to get the rich, saturated blues from the LED fixture, as opposed to arc fixtures that requiring color mixing.
Swetland credits the crew who worked the event as help ensuring its success, specifically lighting director John Lucksinger. Additional support came from Andrew Heid, Shane Harrington and Joey Herring.
