TORONTO – With the popularity of boxing on the rise in Ontario, ensuring Canadian audiences get the kind of bang for their buck provided by high profile bouts is increasingly important. For Craig Bickerstaffe, owner of Toronto production services company, Showworks Inc., that means investing regularly in cutting edge LED technologies.
More details from Elation (www.elationlighting.com):
Showworks road-tested and then purchased Elation’s new DARTZ 360™ narrow-beam fixture, as well as ADJ Vizi CMY300 hybrid moving heads, just prior to United Boxing Promotions’ “The Big Hurt” at the Hershey Centre in Ontario in May. SFM, Elation’s exclusive distributor in Canada, provided the DARTZ and Vizi CMY300 fixtures to Showworks for road testing.
“The first time I saw the DARTZ I was in Montreal and I was blown away by the amount of output for a 50-watt LED fixture,” Bickerstaffe states, adding that many of the lighting designers Showworks has worked with have been similarly impressed. “They’re definitely the right small beam fixtures for our inventory and both products are compatible with our Power Con infrastructure, which meant we didn’t have to make an additional investment.”
With a beam spread of only three degrees and beam effects produced from a 50W RGB LED engine, the DARTZ 360 is extremely bright for its wattage and size and delivers an output comparable to larger discharge lamp fixtures. In addition to eleven fixed gobos for surface or mid-air pattern looks, it houses two prisms to multiply the effect and a linear frost for bright washes.
For “The Big Hurt,” United Boxing Promotions wanted the fighters’ entrance area to look like a Vegas-style boxing production and Showworks lighting technician Eric Agur and Bickerstaffe decided the DARTZ and Vizi were the best solution to achieve the look. Twenty-four DARTZ 360s were deployed around the arena to light the audience and provide movement in the stands and on the floor via a combination of the fixture’s onboard prisms and gobos. DARTZ fixtures were also placed alongside 16 x 10-foot video screens (ADJ AV6) left and right of the entry area with ADJ Vizi CMY300 placed on the floor and flown to cover the entryway. Additionally, multiple Elation ZW37 LED beam/wash moving head effects were used to illuminate the ring. “It was a 6000-person event so there was a lot of area to light up,” Bickerstaffe notes.
The success of “The Big Hurt” and similar events clearly shows that interest in live boxing is growing and so are audience expectations in terms of the level of production and the overall experience. Bickerstaffe says that products like the DARTZ 360 and Vizi CMY300 are exactly the type of tools necessary to meet those expectations effectively and consistently. “They are, 100 percent. Five years ago you’d need twice as many lights to do what these do, and I know people enjoy the experience because they tell us how great everything was. So I think these fixtures are going to find a really good home in the marketplace.”
The substantial power savings with LED is also a big win for everyone, including clients, Bickerstaffe sums up. And regardless of whether those clients are mounting a small event, a large-scale corporate gathering, national tour, or multi-day festival, every single one of them appreciates cost effective, versatile lighting solutions that amp up the visual wow factor so impressively.
