LONDON - Controversy is nothing new to hard-fought Premier League football matches, and Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Chelsea on February 3 was no exception. Should Jurien Timber’s game winning goal have been nullified because of a penalty? Fans will passionately (and probably joyfully!) argue over that for some time to come. But there’s one thing that everyone who crowded into Emirates Stadium can agree on - the pre-match lightshow that Ed Warren ran on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M Stadium Console was two-minutes of pure brilliance.
Warren set ambitious goals for his show, which he visualized using Capture software. “Following the music as it built up, I wanted to have a multi-dimensional show that transformed the space,” he said. “I wanted to be able to wash the crowd in color without blinding them. I wanted to create a grid of lines across the pitch, which had never been done before in this stadium. I also wanted to create a big searchlight look out into the sky -- and I wanted to make the inner roof of the stadium strobe.”
Working with a kit supplied by Zeal, Warren was able to pull all of this off without a hitch. “Everyone at the club was super accommodating from day one in every aspect, which really helps things go smoothly in a project of this scope,” he remarked. “Woody, Steve and John at Zeal and their crew -- Holly, Mitch, John, Caleb and Lewis were a great help, as were Tim East, James Kirkup, Mikel Arteta, Gabriel Heinze and Kai Havertz at Arsenal.”
Although Warren drew on many of the performance features of his ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M Stadium Console, including its high capacity and various playback modes and encoders, a real key for him in this project was the ability it gave him to program wirelessly via the app.
“The freedom was invaluable,” he remarked when looking back on the pre-match show. “I was walking on the pitch with an I-Pad connected to the MQ250M focusing the perimeter lights, which helped me get them nice and straight. Before getting to site, all my renders were visualized using Capture controlled by the MQ250M. I put everything in there first, then linked the ChamSys and imported the patch direct.
“Then once I had an MVR off the supplier, I did the same again, but this time with accurate fixture positions and orientations,” continued Warren. “When you’re dealing with a project like this one, the value of having this kind of flexibility at your fingertips cannot be understated.”
About ChamSys
Based in the UK, ChamSys Ltd. was founded in 2003 by a group of designers and product developers seeking to create a lighting console that offered greater flexibility. The company’s MagicQ range has set an industry standard used in some of the most prominent concert, theatre, broadcast and club applications around the world. ChamSys was acquired in 2017 by Chauvet & Sons LLC, a leading global provider of professional luminaires, trusses, controllers and related equipment headquartered in the USA. For more information, visit www.chamsysusa.com