WASHINGTON, DC — With gigs aplenty in the nation’s capital, the inauguration provided more than a ray of hope to lighting and staging companies. In the span of eight days, for example, Atmosphere Inc. coordinated and executed lighting for 52 shows in 24 different venues across the city, including two of the largest — the Commander in Chief’s Ball for members of the military at the National Building Museum and the Youth Inaugural Ball at the Washington Hilton & Towers. For the Commander in Chief’s Ball, Atmosphere supplied a package of 28 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles, 17 MAC 2000 Wash fixtures, 36 Color Kinetics ColorBlasts and numerous television and conventional fixtures. The Youth Inaugural Ball was lit with a lighting system that included over 500 feet of truss, thirty Martin fixtures and a full lighting package driven by an MA Lighting grandMA.
Atmosphere supported numerous other events over the four day span, including events at the Newseum, most of the Smithsonian museums and the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. The Huffington Post Pre-Inaugural Ball at the Newseum included performances by Sting, and will.i.am. Inside the Newseum, multiple LED fixtures, including 30 ColorBlasts, eight ColorBlaze 72s and eight Martin MAC 700 Profiles complemented the Robe fixtures that were part of the in-house rig. At the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History, account executive Andrew Platt coordinated seven separate events, working with his clients and the Museum staff to maximize the lighting packages and minimize the impact on the Museums by limiting load-ins and load-outs.
For the Green Inaugural Ball at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium and the 2009 Green Inaugural Ball hosted by Al Gore at the Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, designers/account executives Billy Koch and Benji Tschudin worked to satisfy the “green” requirements of the event. “We used primarily LEDs for most of the lighting effects, around 100 CB12s and four of Mainlight MF3s, as well as lower wattage conventional fixtures,” said Will Johnson, the programmer for the 2009 Green Ball. “We tried to avoid any large fixtures that would require us to pull more power.”
