For MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs), staged live at Radio City Music Hall, LD Tom Kenny deployed a package of Coemar Infinity Wash XLs, Infinity ACLs and ParLite LEDs provided by Scharff Weisberg Lighting. “An awards show of that size and pressure is like going into battle in the trenches,” Kenny said. “In New York everybody thinks they know how to be the mayor, the president of the United States and the lighting designer of the VMAs. You just have to hold your ground and do your show.”
Working under such conditions, Kenny sought reliability and dependability as well as great creative scope from his lighting instruments. “I used Coemar Infinitys as the firepower on the show,” he says. “All the lights pointing to the cameras were Infinitys. All the uplights and downlights were Coemar ParLite LEDs. And in the Michael Jackson tribute, we deployed all the effects the Infinity had to offer to accompany the video of ‘Thriller’ that was played.”
According to Kenny, the 158 Infinity Wash XLs, 19 Infinity ACL S spots and 40 ParLite 12º LEDs supplied by Scharff Weisberg “complemented the other fixtures we used and really helped me create the looks I wanted.”
Along with brightness, Coemar Infinity Wash XL lights use a new color mix system with CMY and RGB colors. There’s also an effects wheel for creating texture and aerial effects with wash light as well as a beam shaper rotating and indexing at 360 degrees.
The Infinity ACL S is also known for its brightness, variable beam size and beam control with rotating aerial effects; moonflower effects; split color beam effects; and CMY color mixing.
Coemar’s ParLite LED, with standard lens 12º, can be used as a substitute for the analog PAR can. It provides a 75-82 percent energy savings compared to traditional technology at the same brightness and is lightweight, is quiet and flicker-free. It offers RGB color mixing and electronic strobe plus synchronized, random and pulse effects.
“Since doing the VMAs I’ve had millions of texts from people, including one very famous Diva, about the show’s lighting,” Kenny said. “I’ve used Coemar Infinitys on VH1 Storytellers too, and they always nail it.”
