SANDUSKY, Ohio — Designed as a grandiose and captivating live performance, “Luminosity, Powered by Pepsi” lights up the massive set and stage in Celebration Plaza at Cedar Point, the second-oldest operating amusement park in the United States. The 35-minute interactive experience is the perfect way for visitors to end a day of excitement at the park this summer. Hundreds of CHAUVET® fixtures are part of this cutting-edge show that features mesmerizing displays of lights, music and dance performances, special effects, fireworks, pyrotechnics and live DJ action.
“Luminosity, Powered by Pepsi” concentrates about 700 CHAUVET® lights, making it the focal point of Cedar Point come nightfall. More CHAUVET® fixtures light up Millennium Force and Power Tower attraction rides, and the Midway show that takes the visitor on a colorful experience from the entrance of the park to Celebration Plaza, place of “Luminosity.”
Al Crawford, Lighting Designer and President of Arc3design, designed the elaborate lighting rig for “Luminosity, Powered by Pepsi,” successfully merging different design genres into the set. “We love designing for dance, theater, concert, live event, and environmental projects,” Crawford said. “We mixed all of our experiences in these genres into one huge project.” Andrew Strain, lighting designer and owner of Blue Haze Entertainment specified all of the CHAUVET® fixtures and programmed the lighting for the Midway show, Millennium Force roller coaster and Power Tower attraction. Jeremy Doucette served as production designer for the show.
While designing Luminosity Celebration Plaza, Crawford looked to create the ideal environment for a live entertainment-based evening experience. “The design entailed a number of different criteria,” Crawford said. “It needed to be able to serve the needs of the stage show itself, the after party club experience, and to integrate seamlessly with the other design elements of the space such as scenic and video. All of the elements of this show needed to breath as one.”
One of the challenges Crawford overcame relates to the significant scale of the project. “The park wanted a space that was almost operatic on certain levels, but at the same time intimate and storytelling,” he said. “We needed to find and create systems of fixtures that could fill very large spaces, but could also do it with a certain grace. We used a lot of different vocabularies of equipment, for example the Legendâ„¢ 412 from CHAUVET®.”
Crawford wanted to fill not only the space on the stage and audience, but the entire scope of the sky above the performance space. “We used lighting in a lot of unique ways to do dynamic aerial effects that supported the pyrotechnics and lasers in the sky,” Crawford said.
“Most of the lighting systems had significant fixture totals due to the scale of the set and the overall size of the space. We had a lot of room to fill with creative visual stimulus,” Crawford said. A series of long sweeping continuous curves from 138 Legendâ„¢ 412 pixel-mapping moving yokes are designed into the environment, used to create one rocking system of light that encircled the space. “We really enjoyed the Legendâ„¢ 412 because we knew with these beautiful curves of lighting fixtures, we could create something that was very organic,” Crawford said. “With this fixture we could push color in mass and play against the grid-like qualities of the set, or if desired, we could playoff the geometry and use them for their pixel-mapping capabilities to create some really stunning rhythmic effects.”
The stage houses massive video walls made of 112 MVPâ„¢ 18 and 34 MVPâ„¢ 37.5 modular video panels, which display live video content programmed into the show. The video content was created exclusively for "Luminosity" by Bob Bonniol, video, lighting and interactive designer, specializing in designing large-scale lighting, and principal creative director for Mode Studios.
For stage washing, distributed throughout the system, are 65 COLORadoâ„¢ 1-Tri IP, while 84 SlimPARâ„¢ 56 fixtures in custom outdoor housings were used on each truss tower and for truss toning.
“The COLORadoâ„¢ 1-Tri IP lights were a great solution for us,” Crawford said. “These are solid LED PAR-like wash lights, that are a strong solution for a fixed focus pre-lens color mixing PAR. We were actually surprised by the brilliance of the whites of this fixture and used it extensively throughput the show as additional strobes.”
To accent the architecture of the design, Crawford used 48 COLORdashâ„¢ Accent and 52 COLORdashâ„¢ Accent VW lights. “Unique and fast, we placed the COLORdashâ„¢ Accent fixtures on every corner of the set to create a grid pattern,” he said. “It gave us a color mixing point of light at every intersection of the scaffold, so I was really able to bring forward the architecture of Doucette's brilliant set by using this very cost-effective solution.”
The show is programmed as a standalone experience, but the adjacent rides are used as surfaces. “Actually, we had enough output from the fixtures from the main show to be able to light all of the attractions surrounding the experience during certain sequences, which was a great opportunity. I believe the loyal guests at Cedar Point enjoy seeing their rides in a whole new light.” Crawford said.
CHAUVET® gear list for “Luminosity, Powered by Pepsi”:
142 x Legendâ„¢ 412
112 x MVPâ„¢ 18
34 x MVPâ„¢ 37.5
84 x SlimPARâ„¢ 56
65 x COLORadoâ„¢ 1-Tri IP
45 x COLORtubeâ„¢ 3.0 EQ
42 x COLORrailâ„¢ IRC
15 x Arenaâ„¢ Hazer 3
15 x Legendâ„¢ 1200E Spot
12 x COLORtubeâ„¢ EQ Controller
10 x COLORadoâ„¢ Batten 72 Tour
Luminosity Celebration Plaza
Lighting Design Team:
Lighting Designer: Al Crawford
Lighting Director: Zakaria Al-Alami
Associate Lighting Designer: Alex Goldberg
Associate Lighting Designer: Roya Abab
Assistant Lighting Designer: Davida Tkach
Assistant Lighting Designer: Greg Purnell