The very first College Football Playoff National Championship Game took place at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX on Jan. 12, replacing the BCS National Championship Game of seasons past, and with it came a whole weekend of festivities, none of which were brighter than CMT’s Ultimate Kickoff Party.
That was because production designer Mike Swinford was able to get his hands on some of the first of Clay Paky’s new Mythos fixtures to arrive in the U.S. Swinford incorporated 146 of the fixtures in his design for the 90-minute concert special, supplied by Morris Light and Sound’s Nashville location.
The show, featuring Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum and Big & Rich, among others, was aired live on CMT from the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas, kicking off the big weekend on Friday evening, Jan. 9.
Swinford designed a large tiered structure of truss with video elements intertwining through openings in flown vertical sections. While the truss itself was lit with toners, every other beam of light that is seen in the attached pictures comes from a Mythos. The massive, spread-out beam looks emphasized the scale of this televised event. Swinford and his programmer Mike Appel came up with all the looks for the show. The lighting team were pleased with the rock solid performance of all the fixtures straight out of the box.
Swinford had originally spec’d these fixtures (along with many more) for his design on the upcoming Kenny Chesney tour, but when CMT called on his services, he went straight to Morris Light and Sound president David Haskell. Dave was more than happy to help, noting, “Morris Light and Sound do a lot of work with CMT, so we were happy to offer the Mythos on such short order. I always hesitate to send a brand new fixture on a live TV event, especially so many of them. But my confidence level was high enough that Mike was willing to give them a try.” In fact, the lights were so new they didn’t even have road cases for the first gig.
A Lighting-Driven Show
“The show was primarily light driven,” Swinford says, “although we had some low resolution screens in the truss to display graphics, the only other fixtures were some Solaris Flares. With Mythos, I was able to get every single thing I wanted from a single fixture: huge graphic looks — like Sharpy on steroids — the ability to zoom out for a nice texture with gobos and the ability to soften the edges for a pseudo wash-type look. I was confident that Mythos could be the one light that does it all.”
Swinford mounted 24 Mythos on each of three zigzag truss structures made of 10-foot sticks with four-way corner blocks. Each corner block included a five—foot piece of vertical truss featuring two more Mythos fixtures. A fourth zigzag truss, freestanding on eight-foot legs, had 24 more Mythos lights. With this configuration, “we could do one thing, like zoom, with the horizontal Mythos, then add sharp parallel beams from the vertical Mythos,” Swinford explains. “Mythos allowed me to create distinctive looks for each artist by changing up color palettes and using their great gobos.”
The lights also dazzled lighting director and programmer Mike Appel. “Mythos is so small, so bright and so versatile,” he says. “We could go from super Sharpy-type beam mode to a really wide zoom. The patterns, aerials and color mix were really great. It can do everything: strobing, flashing, color changes. We could pop from beam to zoom mode really quickly, and the lights held up well.”
Swinford notes that, for Lady Antebellum, “the Mythos were pointed straight at the camera with a gobo look that was fantastic — very crisp and hard edged. The optics on the lamps are outstanding.”
“We put a star field pattern in the fixture and spun it fast so we got an unbelievably strong look,” adds Appel. “It was a look we couldn’t have gotten before with a smaller head.” He also notes that, on the finale, with Big & Rich covering “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” the light team “went all out. We were in full-on party mode and structured the beams to cut through everything. With all the chasing, we were still able to create a structural look with the beams cutting through. They looked just great!”
Appel had two grandMA2 consoles for lighting control: a full-size desk with three NPUs for the A system and a grandMA2 light with three NPUs for the back up B system. A long-time grandMA fan, Appel began using the system in 2002 migrating to the grandMA2 in 2010. He found that the consoles paired well with the new Mythos fixtures. “The profile for the Mythos that A.C.T Lighting supplied worked just fine; I just made a few small modifications based on my personal preferences.”
It’s no coincidence that Swinford got the first batch of these fixtures seen on a TV special. He had been looking for a new light to excite him when last year A.C.T Lighting vice president of sales and marketing Brian Dowd invited them to Clay Paky’s factory in Italy. Dowd orchestrated the visit, accompanied them on the trip and arranged demos of the new fixture. They were among the first people to ever see the fixture and immediately thought it was amazing. Haskell ordered 240 Mythos lights, and Swinford was first in line to use them.
