ANAHEIM, CA – Arnold Serame, a lighting designer with Serame Design, relied upon 200 Vari*Lite luminaires from 4Wall Los Angeles to light BlizzCon 2010, a four-day event at the Anaheim Convention Center for fans of video games produced by Blizzard Entertainment. "This was my first year with BlizzCon and, right away, I knew I would be in for a challenge," said Serame. "In our initial discussion about the event, Blizzard Entertainment made it clear that they wanted to really step up the production values over previous years. When BlizzCon first started, it was about one-quarter of the size it is today, but the lighting, sound and video elements had not grown to support it. This year we had to step it up."
At BlizzCon all the activities revolved around Blizzard Entertainment's three video games – Diablo, StarCraft and World of Warcraft – with exhibit halls dedicated specifically to each title. Serame also lit the Main Stage, which was used for panel discussions, an awards ceremony and the events' closing night concert featuring Tenacious D.
For those who could not attend BlizzCon in person, event organizers had one HD Pay-Per-View broadcast along with three live Internet streams covering the event in its entirety.
"For the individual game halls, we wanted to make sure that each had its own identity through a consistent color scheme and gobo pattern, but then we also had to make sure that the lights we used would give us the ideal color temperature for both the HDTV and Internet feeds," Serame noted.
The Vari*Lite fixtures – provided by 4Wall LA – included 100 VL3500 Spot, 30 VL3500 Wash, 50 VL3000 Spot, and 20 VL2500 Spot luminaires.
Serame credited 4Wall's real-time inventory tracking capabilities between multiple shops "because, as we were finalizing the plot and making the design choices, fixture count swings from one plot to the next could be significant. With their tracking software, 4Wall could track between all their shops to help me find the ideal package which helped keep our shipping costs down by using the inventory that was available on the West coast."
With the gear in place, Serame and his team had four days to complete the install and programming for the event.
He specified the "VL3500 Spots as a "workhorse key light" for all stages, benefiting from their color, beams, and shuttering capabilities, and opted for the VL3000 Spot luminaires for "great gobo patterns" and backlighting. The VL2500s were used to light "statues in key locations throughout all the halls," chosen for "their pattern and color consistency to match all the other Vari*Lite luminaires."
It was important that the fixtures' color, texture and gobo patterns match each video game, and the Vari*Lite fixtures "gave us the perfect tools," Serame said. "We used the Tribal gobo pattern for Diablo, the Uneven Bars gobo pattern for StarCraft and the Dust gobo pattern for World of Warcraft." Serame also made sure the color temperature for each hall met the needs of the HDTV broadcast and Internet feeds.
"Each stage had to have a consistent color temperature," Serame noted. "The Internet feeds were absolutely crucial with 200,000 people watching online, and so we needed the media to look good on computer screens as well as on a HDTV broadcast. For this color temperature consistency, we needed the Vari*Lite fixtures on every stage, and every point of broadcast was lit primarily by Vari*Lite."
The fixtures also provided the LD for Tenacious D with everything he needed to come up with some energetic rock ‘n' roll looks at the close of the show.
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