The City of Paramount in California started the holiday season at the end of November 2023 with the 25th instalment of its annual Tree Lighting Celebration. Lit by a variety of ADJ luminaires, the free event was attended by thousands of locals and featured live musical and dance performances.
Technical production for the event was provided by Ambient Pro, with the principal, Victor Nava, serving as Production Manager. The company was responsible for building the stage as well as providing all audio, lighting, video, and special effects equipment for the celebration. Due to the landmark anniversary, the whole production was dialled up from the previous year, with Ambient Pro providing a bigger stage as well as more lighting and effects equipment.
The 32’ by 28’ stage was illuminated by ADJ’s LED-powered Encore Profile Pro WW ellipsoidal fixtures, which were rigged to horizontal bars mounted to truss totems positioned at the FOH position. Additional fixtures were also used to light a photo wall and large balloon sculpture of a train, which were located to one side of the stage. These professional stage lighting fixtures offer a warm white output with a colour temperature of 3200K and a high CRI of >97.
At total of eight Focus Spot 6Z automated luminaires were rigged to both the upstage and downstage trusses as well as positioned directly on the back of the stage. “The Focus Spot 6Z is a really versatile fixture,” enthused Nava. “It has a great zoom range which allowed us to use it to create some nice tight beam looks as well as wide GOBO projections which hit the stage and the street as well as the buildings on either side.”
An additional eight Focus Wash 400 moving head fixtures were also split across the upstage and downstage trusses. Powered by a 400-watt RGBACL color mixing LED engine positioned behind a 6” Fresnel lens with a motorised zoom function offering a variable beam angle of between 10 and 41-degrees. For the Paramount Tree Lighting event, the fixtures were primarily utilised to illuminate the simulated snow but were also used to add color and movement on stage during the performances. “I really like the brightness and the color mixing of the Focus Wash 400,” commented Nava, “those fixtures really did a great job of making the snow really pop!”
Six Entour Snow machines were used to fill downtown Paramount with a flurry of synthetic snow were mounted in pairs, with one set hanging from the front of the stage and two further sets attached to truss totems located further back in the crowd. Ten 18P Hex IP LED par fixtures were mounted to a pair of vertical pipes positioned at the back of stage to provide backlight for the performances while compact 7PZ IP zooming LED pars served as truss warmers for the stage structure.
Finally, 30 of the WiFLY Par QA5 battery-powered wireless par fixtures were used to illuminate the nearby trees and also mounted to the truss totems to light the rear sections of crowd. WiFLY wireless DMX technology was used to send control signals to these fixtures as well as the other lighting on both the totems and the main stage using a series of WiFly Transceiver devices.
To accentuate the beams and effects created by the lighting, two of ADJ’s road ready Entourage haze machines were positioned at the rear of the stage, one on either side. Featuring 1,400W heating elements and built into durable road cases, these potent machines use regular water-based fog fluid to create an output of up to 15,000 cubic ft. per minute. “We were only running them at around 20-25% and that was more than enough to fill the stage,” enthused Victor.
Ambient Pro also supplied a pair of ADJ’s Bubbletron XL high output portable bubble machines, which were saved for the performance by Vilma Diaz y La Sonora. Despite a tight build schedule, Victor and the Ambient Pro team had everything ready for the start of the event.
