MOSCOW — The gear list at the 54th annual Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals and finals included some 2,000 square meters of LED, and the largest assembly of PRG Bad Boy luminaires on any one show yet — 72 of the 48,000 lumen output instruments. The PRG fixtures are installed around the rig and positioned directly over the stage. Rich Gorrod, lighting gaffer, said, “They’re absolutely spectacular. They’re bright as hell, giving the Syncrolites a run for their money, with lightning snap color and gobo change. Plus the zoom is unbelievable, from pencil beam to super wide, and most of all they’re incredibly reliable. They’ve been running 18 hours a day for the last four weeks — which says a lot for such a new light. They just do everything that it says on the tin — fantastically well. We’ve brought two techs to Moscow just for the Bad Boys and they’ve been bored to tears.”
“They’re simply a dream come true,” added LD Al Gurdon. “We have loads of LED, and these still stand out with no problem whatsoever. They look amazing on camera and deliver these vibrant, saturated colors that I want with incredibly smooth and fast precision. A show of this magnitude demands quite a lot from its equipment, and the Bad Boy has proven itself to be a champion.”
The PRG fixtures have also been used for the Grammy Awards, The Celebrity Apprentice and tours including Oasis and Britney Spears.
Eurovision is one of the most-watched television productions in the world, with an estimated 200 million viewers. The format began simply enough back in 1954 — a live broadcast of the members of the European Broadcast Union competing to win the title of Best Song in Europe, with the winner bestowed the honor of hosting the contest the next year in their home country. The production has since reached much larger proportions, and 42 countries now compete in two semi-finals and one final, each show a live broadcast.
When Russia won Eurovision in Belgrade, Serbia last year, Russian show producers were immediately driven to make the 2009 production in Moscow the biggest yet.
The Bad Boy is a hybrid luminaire that combines the qualities of a traditional automated fixture light with a large-venue fixture. “It was one of the first things specified for this production,” said Ola Melzig, production manager for Eurovision. “I first saw it at PLASA last year, and I could immediately tell that it was designed with today’s shows, which often involve high-brightness LED screens, in mind.”
Along with its 48,000 lumen output, PRG touts the Bad Boy for its optical clarity, a zoom range of 8:1 (7° to 56°), high-speed servo motors, 0 to 100 percent dimming and a Quantum Color® system that uses individual color filters to provide variation in saturation and hue.
“We at PRG are very pleased to play a supporting role for the Eurovision Song Contest,” said Anne Johnston, vice president of marketing for PRG. “It is exciting to see this many Bad Boys on such a grand stage with a worldwide audience. We were thrilled to see the Bad Boy was enjoying so many rave reviews from the hard working crew and designers. The production is a massive undertaking and we are proud to play a role.”
For more information, please visit www.prg.com.
