PRAGUE – The Czech Republic won its fourth Fed Cup women’s tennis title in five years in the 2015 final staged at Prague’s O2 Arena in front of a capacity 14,500 audience who enjoyed a nail-biting weekend of superlative tennis with their team playing a really strong Russian contingent … and Robe was one of six very proud sponsors.
More details from Robe (www.robe.cz):
Robe moving lights were also used for the high energy Opening Ceremony (OC) spectacular show designed by Milan “Mejla” Froňek from Lightneq, which prepared everyone for plenty of on-court excitement to follow. The installation and technical support was co-ordinated by Prague-based AV Media.
Milan has created high impact lighting schemes for numerous other top sporting events including the World Ice Hockey Championships held in the Czech Republic in May, the Sochi Olympic Park installation at Letna Park, Prague, during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and for the award-winning Czech House during the 2012 London Olympics.
For the FED Cup final, Milan had some of Robe’s newest fixtures at his fingertips including 26 x BMFLs – 12 Blades and 14 Spots; 16 x LEDBeam 1000s; 12 x Pointes; 10 of the brand new LED Strobes; five Squares – making their live debut; 4 x CitySkape Xtreme LED floods and two CycFX8s. These were arranged on four trusses flown around the O2 Arena’s central LED display cube For the opening ceremony these production trusses were lowered in to a trim height of 12 meters above the playing area below.
The BMFL Blades were the stars of the intense 2 minute opening show! Milan used them to map and project a tennis court created from light onto the area below, with gobos dividing it up with the line markings. Also, with precision use of the BMFL Blades’ framing shutters and gobos, the lights mimicked a computer generated tennis match for a section of the show … two tennis rackets batting a ball – all made of light – between them, which really got the audience on their feet.
The tennis game idea was first initiated by the Robe’s own lighting project manager for the event, Petr Kolmacka. Other elements of the show included the morphing of the three colors making up both the Czech and Russian flags combined with strobe effects and the rainbow colors on the tennis court to symbolize peace and tolerance.
The rest of the lights were used for general lighting during the OC on the play area and around the audience, ramping up the drama as a rousing music track blasting out through the PA system.
