PR Lighting on Parade at Mexico’s Giant Bicentennial Celebrations

23 September 2010 10.40 BST

SP provides stunning century color / design 150 architectural washes at the Zocalo main square

It’s not every day a country celebrates a bicentennial — and when Mexico started planning its celebration to mark 200 years since its independence from Spain (and 100 years since the revolution), Sebastian Corkidi’s event staging company, Simply Professional, were at the centre of activity.

Specialists in producing outdoor events on a large scale, the company was commissioned to provide the technical infrastructure for the massive $60 million Government-run event at the imposing Zocalo main square in Mexico City, on the strength of their past work. This featured a breathtaking display of aerial acrobatics (choreographed by Ric Birch), fireworks, rock music and parades, attended by tens of thousands of people.

“The event producers had seen my work and knew the company had a large inventory of professional lighting — so they contacted me to participate in the design,” said Corkidi.

Having worked with PR Lighting fixtures for the past six years he knew that lighting designer Victor Zapatero would find everything he needed to bring the concept to life, from within Simply Professional’s inventory.

Surrounded by famous buildings, it was to colour wash the iconic Cathedral — that formed the backdrop to the stage at the North end — that Zapatero turned to 24 of PR Lighting’s architectural favourites, the Century Color 2500. Using the long-life MSA2500 DE lamp, rated at 2000 hours, they were able to flood the Cathedral with colour over a long duty cycle. The Century Colors were supplemented by 40 of PR Lighting’s compact and versatile Design 150 Pro’s — which are also IP65-rated for outdoor use. Vacuum plated dichroic colour filters produced rich saturated colours, and the CYM colour mixing system had the ability to deliver an almost infinite range of colours.

Simply Professional also provided the production lighting on two stages, where in addition to the 200 acrobats, there were performances by other celebrities, including chart-topping Tigres del Norte.

For the Vuela Mexico stage, they provided 48 x PR Lighting LED590 moving head LED washlights (each head containing 90 high power 5W LED's). For Arbol de la Vida (Tree of Life) — set against the Cathedral — they fielded a further 50 Design 150 Pro fixtures.

Sebastian Corkidi said that all PR Lighting fixtures had performed outstandingly. “The architectural fixtures provided great colour saturation, power and dispersion while I was impressed by the fast response of the XLED’s — which generate great light power, with anincredible strobe effect.”

All the lighting was controlled from a Grand MA Full Master console and MA Lite back up.

Founded in 2002 with the aim of providing audio, video and lighting solutions for the professional market, this was the latest in a long line of prestigious projects undertaken by Simply Professional.
 
All PR Lighting fixtures were supplied by Mexican distributor, Hermes Music.