The glamour in Hollywood’s annual awards shows is as much about specialty lighting as it is about red carpets and celebrities: from podium-spotlighting for the award recipients, to concert lighting for changing musical acts and moods, to house lighting for the audience, and effects lighting for broadcast requirements. ETC’s flagship lighting control system, Eos (an award winner, having taken top honours at the LDI, Showtech and PLASA tradeshows) handled all those challenges this year to make the recent Golden Globes and Academy Awards shine brighter. ETC Eos console is available from Jands .
For the 2009 Golden Globes, an Eos console along with a 2x20 ETC Universal Fader Wing controlled all of the conventional and practical lights. Gil Samuelian, Board Programmer, built all of the cue and submaster contents in blind and was then able to modify the lighting smoothly during rehearsals before the show. Once it came time to stage the whole show, everything went efficiently with Eos.
An Eos console also controlled 700 channels of conventional dimming and hazers, as well as house, architectural and on-stage conventional lights for the Academy Awards on February 2009. Backing up the Eos on this high-stake, most-watched entertainment programme in two years, was an Eos remote processor unit and two 2x20 Universal Fader Wings with added additional playback options.
According to Samuelian, the Academy Awards can be unpredictable, so hands-on control and fast manual overrides are absolutely critical. The combination of motorised and non-motorised faders provided matching data to work in a live environment. The displays provided a complete and easily understood picture of the current state of the rig.
Summing up the awards-show process this year, Samuelian says that even though these were some of his first shows and despite the pressure of the working environment, he found it fast and simple to make changes and keep up with the demand.