CMU School of Drama


Friday, September 01, 2023

Painting with Light delivers Happy Belgium Finale spectacular

LightSoundJournal.com: Creative visual practice Painting with Light (PWL) was asked by the Agoria Sports and Entertainment Technology club – a networking hub for Belgian technology leaders – to show direct and design lighting for an epic mixed media visual spectacle – lighting, lasers & fireworks – which was the finale segment of the official 2023 Belgian National Day celebrations.

4 comments:

Leumas said...

I found this article very interesting because it shows how there are a lot of skills that we learn in theater that might be helpful in other worlds as well. This article briefly spoke about the efforts made to light the architecture of the venue, rather than just focusing on the beams in the air. This would require similar techniques to lighting a set. I also found the discussion on working together between the different departments interesting. While we may not have pyro in most theater shows, a good design process involves working together between the departments to make an impressive and clean final result. For the actual playback of the show, they used timecode based on the music which is something which we can do as well in theater although it can be made more difficult by a live band and live performers on stage. Overall I found it interesting how many similarities can be found between this show and a play.

John E said...

I Love this article! Three of my favorite things, Lights, Pyro, and Architecture all coming together to produce one truly beautiful performance piece. These are the kinds of stories I love to see, different mediums all coming together to produce one show stopping finale and everyone bringing their A game. It was fascinating to me to learn about the technology they developed in order to visualize the fireworks so that they could be synced with the music and lights and so the first time seeing it all together was not the actual performance. It also surprised me the few number of fixtures that were used in the lighting rig, because I would have thought that there would have been more needed in order to fill that space. But it was the perfect amount with clearly light all over but not too much in any one place that it became overwhelming. Overall just absolutely beautiful and breathtaking!

Helen Maleeny said...

I’m in awe of the scale, and unbelievable work that was done here to produce this event. I wish I could’ve been there, to see this collaboration between three light-oriented disciplines. I was especially impressed when I read that they had to follow a ‘2-hour music festival,’ as versus having a fresh audience who are excited to be impressed, they had to deal with a possibly exhausted crowd who have had their energy up for hours. To maintain the focus, attention, and excitement of that crowd must’ve been a feat. However seeing the images of the event, the qualms about the audience are rendered unnecessary, as it seemed to be seamless and breathtaking. It would’ve been so interesting to sit in on their tech rehearsal, and to see what they altered in order to make it work. How they were able to plan the correlation between lights and lasers, And fireworks is baffling, as if you (for clear reasons) don’t test the fireworks during tech, how do you know it will work seamlessly? Their team must’ve been so good with communication and collaboration. As well as the lighting event itself, they had to film it! I would be so interested to learn about how you would go about filming an event like this, did the positioning of the cameras had to be precise to avoid glare and other complications with the light?

Abigail Lytar said...

It is amazing to see Lights, Lasers and fireworks all come together in this finale. Three very different disciplines all worked together to create this awe filled 15 minute finale. This is a very unique find, rarely do you hear about these three disciplines coming together to create such an extravagant show. In Georgia, Stone Mountain hosts a Laser show on the side of the mountain. They do amazing things with the lasers and I love going to see it, but they don’t integrate lights and fireworks on the same scale. They do use fireworks but I would say it is more to accent the lasers than it is hand and hand like in the above article. I am not sure I have heard of another show that entwined these disciplines in this way. I hope to see more work like this in the future.