Lighting Designer Matthew Tunchon and Qatar Vision Production Company WLL (QVISION) utilized a large Claypaky rig to light the first test event for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 inside the newly built Lusail Stadium in Doha, which hosted the tournament’s final match between France and Argentina.
The event marked the official unveiling of the World Cup uniform for staff and volunteers. Since the soccer pitch was being prepared for the final match, the ceremony’s attendance was limited to 25,000 people but the event had to feel big in size and scope.
“Executive Producer Dan Bolton and Creative Producer Tom Davies both from Dubai-based BE Experiential, expressed the need to make this event fill out the stadium,” says Tunchon of Silver Bullet Projects in Sydney, Australia. “The production designed by Nathan Heverin needed to work around the pitch and be quite compact, so it was up to the lighting to really give the event a big arena look.”
To help achieve that, Tunchon assembled a rig featuring 50 Claypaky Scenius Unicos, 40 A.leda B-EYE K20s, 25 Sharpys and 30 Hepikos. “We used the B-EYEs in the seating area behind the stage to provide some great effects and to backlight the performance stage,” Tunchon explains. “The big face of these fixtures as well as the huge amount of looks you can get out of them meant they were really great at helping to pull the stage out from its position in front of the seating area.”
Along with the B-EYEs the “real star fixture” at the event were the Hepikos beam/wash lights, he reports. “Their brightness, colors, and speed were great, but when this fixture goes into beam mode it’s a whole other light. With 30 positioned on either side of the stage as well as in the middle bowl these beams really stood out amongst everything else we had in the rig.”
The Scenius Unico spots did the majority of the work when it came to providing key light to the stage as well as to performances that took place on the field of play, according to Tunchon. “Their great output as well as their shuttering capability were really put to good use,” he notes.
The complement of Sharpy Plus fixtures was used to create a ring around the upper stadium. “Their punch and fast responsiveness worked well with their ability to zoom into a nice tight beam for some aerial effects then flood out to light lower levels of the audience,” Tunchon points out. “It was a great fixture to have access to.”
Overall, the lighting designer was impressed with the wide array of Claypaky fixtures and their ability to work well together. “It was really good to see how uniform the Claypaky equipment was,” says Tunchon. “The colors were very consistent across each fixture type, and they were all very reliable in the extreme weather conditions they operated in at the stadium.”
QVISION supplied and installed the lighting equipment to BE Experiential for the orientation event. This included all lighting, rigging, and AV control equipment. They also supplied technical crew and operation staff. With Silver Bullet Projects, Clinton Seery was the event’s Technical Director and Aaron Russ the Programmer.
Further information from Claypaky: www.claypaky.it
