Simply Professional, an event staging company led by Sebastian Corkidi, was called upon by the Mexican government to play a key role in planning the $60 million celebration marking 200 years since Mexico declared independence from Spain and 100 years since the Mexican Revolution. Taking place at the Zócalo (main square) in Mexico City, the celebration included a display of aerial acrobatics choreographed by Ric Birch, fireworks, rock music and parades. Tens of thousands of people attended.
"The event producers had seen my work and knew the company had a large inventory of professional lighting – so they contacted me to participate in the design," said Corkidi, who has accumulated a variety of PR Lighting fixtures over the past six years, and was confident that LD Victor Zapatero would find everything he needed to bring the celebration to life.
Zapatero used 24 PR Lighting Century Color 2500s, 40 Design 150 Pros to light the cathedral and surrounding buildings. Both fixtures are IP65-rated for outdoor use and feature a CMY color mixing system that can provide a wide array of saturated colors. The Century Color 2500s also use the 2000-hour-rated MSA2500 DE lamp, which allowed for a long duty cycle.
Simply Professional also provided the production lighting on two stages, where in addition to the 200 acrobats, there were performances by others including Tigres del Norte. PR Lighting's Mexican distributor, Hermes Music, was the source for all the fixtures.
For the Vuela Mexico stage, Simply Professional provided 48 PR Lighting LED590 moving head LED washlights, each head containing 90 5W LEDs. For Arbol de la Vida (Tree of Life) – set against the Cathedral – the crew used another 50 Design 150 Pro fixtures.
Corkidi credited the gear for "great color saturation, power and dispersion" and was also impressed by the "fast response of the XLEDs, which generate great light power, with an incredible strobe effect."
All the lighting was controlled from a grandMA Full Master console and MA Lite back up.
