During the Super Bowl XLVII festivities in New Orleans, there were a number of office buildings around town that were wrapped in Super Bowl-themed graphics celebrating the event. These installations were lit with color and gobos to highlight the huge big game graphics. New Orleans-based Solomon Group provided the design and installation for many of these locations. Solomon Group won the 2012 Live Design Excellence Award for Architainment for the exterior lighting system that they designed for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. “One of our clients that we worked with for the Super Bowl events was Sports Graphics who designed the big building wraps,” says Gary Solomon Jr., president of the Solomon Group. “We did all of the lighting on all of the building wraps including all of the NFL signage around the city.”
For a number of the buildings, lighting designers Rob Kodadek and Matt Foucheaux from Solomon Group wanted to use the PRG Bad Boy® Spot luminaires for pattern projection. After speaking with PRG, the Solomon Group designers brought in not only 27 Bad Boys but also got a large portion of the supplemental lighting and control from PRG to augment their own equipment. Jonathan Foucheaux, Solomon Group partner and project manager, explains why the Bad Boy was the light the designers chose. “We were looking for the brightest possible fixture that we could stick a gobo in. The Bad Boy seemed to be it; the best choice. We had been using other fixtures for gobo projection on buildings, but you needed to add an outdoor enclosure. The Bad Boy, with its 1,200W lamp and its larger optical path is bright. It was actually the first time we used it on a show. We liked them a lot, especially that they didn't need an outdoor enclosure, which was very helpful with them being outside for a week and a half. Also, working with PRG was great. We got in touch with them because we wanted to get the Bad Boy and we ended up going ahead and getting the whole package from them and it worked out really well.”
Mercedes-Benz Superdome
Solomon Group’s exterior lighting design for the Superdome, which has been part of the city landscape since October 2011, includes Martin Exterior 410 fixtures to add color to the dome of the stadium. For the Super Bowl, they were tasked with adding more color and light to the Super Bowl graphics on the lower ring of the building and providing some custom gobos of the Super Bowl XLVII logo to project onto the structure. For the logo projection, the designers used two Bad Boys with custom gobos projecting on the Superdome at the main entrance, at the end of the thoroughfare from the fan plaza.
To provide additional color, they used 44 Philips Color Kinetics ColorReach RGB LED units. They also added 32 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500 HPEs to light the lower ring as well; hanging the lighting from 16 truss structures comprising a total of 512 truss sections that was provided by ShowRig. Control was via a High End Systems Wholehog 3 console and powered by eight Aggreko Generators. The lighting operator was Alaster Adams with L.B. Connely, and Marcus Stanley serving as production electricians.
Benson Tower
For lighting the large Sports Graphic Super Bowl XLVII graphic mounted on the Benson Tower, LDs Foucheaux and Kodadek used eight PRG Bad Boy luminaires controlled via a HES Wholehog 3 console. “I used the Bad Boys to light the buildings and with it I was able to create a whole bunch of stunning effects and exciting things that people hadn’t seen before,” describes Kodadek. “I’m always happy to use the Bad Boy. It has a lot of output.” Lighting was operated again by Adams along with production electricians Connely and Stanley.
Aquarium of the Americas
“We lit the outside of the aquarium as well,” comments Kodadek. “I had a bunch of Bad Boys at the aquarium to light up the glass walls. We got a lot of use out of those lights, they were spread out all over town.” The designers used eight Bad Boys to light the graphics and glass exterior of the aquarium, controlled with a Martin Professional M2GO console run by lighting operator Thomas Meric.Tom Kraesig handled the technical direction for this location.
Hyatt Regency New Orleans
For the exterior lighting at the Hyatt Regency, Foucheaux and Kodadek used two Arri Arrimax 18kW HMI Fresnels to highlight the large Super Bowl graphic that hung from the side of the building. Cinelease provided these lights. Adams was the operator and the lighting electrician was Eddie McIntyre.