LOS ANGELES — Royal Caribbean’s cruise ship, Independence of the Seas, is big enough to house a 1,350-seat theatre, and Hariton/Baral Design needed to come up with a set for 21 musicians performing on stage. Design partners Gerry Hariton and Vicki Baral modeled the set on the concentric arches of the Hollywood Bowl, and worked with LDs Peter Moore and Mark Pranzini from Lightspeed Productions to light the concentric arches of the set with X-Chip LED chips from Acclaim Lighting. “Once we decided on the concept of the Hollywood Bowl, we started looking for a lighting product that could do indirect LED lighting, that we could actually build into the set,” said Hariton, who has been working with Royal Caribbean for a decade. “We had been doing LED lighting with other products in the past, and we needed something that was an upgrade from what we had been using.”
Along with reliability and the right quality of light, the Independence of the Seas had to be very quick and easy to install, because projects on cruise ships typically have to be completed within a shorter amount of time than those in other types of venues.
The design team found what they were looking for in Acclaim Lighting’s X-Chip, a modular LED PCB that uses tri-color RGB SMD LEDs. These units can be controlled via the X-Chip driver, which accepts DMX-512 protocol control and, in turn, allows the color-mixing LED chip to be used for custom displays. The design team chose the model X-Chip-100 SMD, a small surface mount LED that measures four inches in length and contains five tri-color SMD red, green and blue LEDs.
“We actually went to Eric Loader’s office and set up a demo at the distance from the background that the product would be placed, which was 3 inches from the wall,” Hariton said, referring to Acclaim’s director of sales. “We found that the X-Chip had the brightness and evenness of illumination that we were looking for. Another thing that really attracted us to the X-Chip was that it was modular and very easy to install. We also liked the color temperature of the X-Chip — it mixed to a really nice white, which was important.”
About 600 feet of X-Chips — approximately 1,800 units — were used in the set’s nine overhead arches and in the linear and circular strips that frame the orchestra members’ seating areas.
All of the pieces were pre-fabricated at River City Scenic in Cincinnati, Ohio before being installed on the Independence of the Seas. “Once we got on the ship we had a very short timetable to install everything,” said Hariton. “We were able to accomplish this because the X-Chips can be plugged one into another and we didn’t have to solder anything.”
What appear to be nine individual concentric arches are actually three flown wall units, each containing several arcs of bent aluminum channel lined with X-Chips. When installed in the theater, they give the illusion of a 3D-like tunnel of arches.
The rear piece, which is a solid wall, is comprised of five arches, which get progressively smaller from top to bottom. The middle section, positioned over the bandstand, contains an additional three arches. The final section, outside the bandstand, holds the remaining three arches.
“The whole thing is just three different layers, but each layer has multiple arches,” said Hariton. “Because each of the arches is individually controlled, we could really create depth by having the foreground arches a different color or brightness than the background arches. This gives it a real tunnel-like appearance.”
Strips of X-Chips framing the orchestra members can be color-coordinated with the arches, pulling together the look of the whole set.
“The range of colors that these LED chips provide is really spectacular,” said Hariton. “The client really loves the magnitude of the effect and the fact that we can get so many different looks on one set just by changing the colors.”
Another aspect of the LED lights that gets its fair share of appreciation is the cool operating temperature, an important consideration when the fixtures are in close quarters with 21 musicians together on a relatively small stage.
For more information, please visit www.acclaimlighting.com.
