HOUSTON — Christie Lites supplied four grandMA consoles, four grandMA Lites and a 12-person crew for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s WrestleMania XXV, telecast on pay-per-view from Reliant Stadium in Houston. “WrestleMania XXV was “big in all respects: big audience, big production value, perhaps the biggest PPV event of the year,” said Robert Roth of Christie Lites, of the event which drew a sellout crowd of 72,744 and grossed a reported $6.9 million in ticket sales.
Ten semis of lighting equipment were required for WrestleMania XXV. The gear included more than 500 moving lights and an equal number of conventional fixtures, plus truss, rigging and 15 miles of cable.
The crew included lighting/production designer Jason Robinson and programmers Jeff Wilkin, Anthony “Geddy” Kordyjaka, Jason Shaw, John Buck and Troy Eckerman. Brian Petree was production manager.
The event featured eight matches with wrestlers from WWE’s Raw, Smack Down and ECW. Each of those wrestling brands required a different “look, color theme and music,” Roth noted.
“In addition, the team had to light the audience completely for TV while allowing them to see the matches. Production designer Jason Robinson did a masterful job of that in a stadium scale environment.”
Although it’s never easy to take on the challenge of coordinating resources and keeping to a strict time frame, the choice of console made that challenge a little less daunting.
“Previous WrestleManias had employed a different control platform and the design team was really pleased with their switch to grandMAs,” Roth said. “The boards performed flawlessly and enabled them to get the show programmed in three days,” he added, crediting both gear and crew.
“My hat is off to Jason Robinson, to Christie Lites and to the talented team of programmers for pulling off a well-lit spectacle,” said Bob Gordon, president and CEO of A.C.T Lighting, the distributor of the grandMA. “These shows are an extreme adrenaline rush, from load-in to being on the air, and the grandMA system is ideal in this environment,” he added. “This is the environment in which the grandMA really shines.”
For more information, please visit www.actlighting.com.
