The Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Central Americana & Caribbean Games, Colombia included nearly 200 Robe moving lights.
LD John J Orduña Sarmiento was part of a highly talented team involved in the show’s technical production, for which lighting equipment – including all the Robe fixtures – was supplied by leading Colombian rental company, Línea Estratégica based in Medellin.
For John Orduña the challenges in lighting the show were making it big, bold and dazzling to meet everyone’s expectations. He had to ensure that there was minimal lighting spillage onto the pitch that might interfere with the projections, whilst crafting dynamic lighting environments for all the various individual artists plus the show cast on the pitch.
John explained: “There was only one option for a project like this, to use Robe, I think Robe has concentrated on manufacturing some of the finest fixtures on the market today”
John specified 40 Robe MegaPointes, 80 Robe Spiiders and 56 x BMFL WashBeams to assist in this ambitious task, and these became the core element of his show.
All 40 Robe MegaPointes and 38 of the Robe Spiiders were deployed on the stage. Plus 42 Robe Spiiders were positioned all around the soccer pitch and used for low-level washes and to pick out the cast/dancers, joined by 24 x BMFL WashBeams as this was an ideal position for providing precisely shuttered lighting on the performers whilst keepthe ing light off the pitch.
The other 36 Robe BMFL WashBeams were rigged around the stadium roof where they had great impact piercing the night sky and throwing high definition gobos and texturing down onto the pitch.
He explained: “I was absolutely really blown away by the MegaPointe – super impressed by its power, the zoom and the lovely bright colours. The versatility of the fixture is incredible it really is equally good in quality and functionality as a spot, beam or wash fixture.”
For this show, it was essential to have a very bright fixture with a framing system. With many lighting positions 80 – 100 ft away from the stage and the cast action in the centre of the field-of-play, they needed both serious lumens on one hand and accuracy on the other.
John added: “Locating the BMFL WashBeams around the soccer field like this and having that controllability, we could easily achieve the all-important light levels needed for it to look great on TV.”
