Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Lighting Design Group turns iconic Times Square NYE rig all IP with Chauvet and 4Wall

For the first time in its over 50-year history, the “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest” TV special, broadcast from New York’s Times Square, had an all IP rated lighting rig. This was the result of The Lighting Design Group adding the Chauvet Professional Colorado Solo Bar 6, supplied by 4Wall Entertainment, to its rig for the five-hour broadcast, which is watched by 18 million.

“Over the past handful of years, we’ve been slowly migrating our equipment to IP rated gear because of the sometimes terrible weather conditions that we deal with”, says The Lighting Design Group’s Mike Grabowski, project manager of the New Year’s Eve broadcast lighting. “The Solo Bars joined the other Chauvet IP units to complete the package.”

“With the show being live all those hours straight, we have limited opportunities for swap outs”, he continues. “I specifically do the broadcast stage, where the midnight countdown happens, as well as taking care of Ryan and his co-hosts as they run all over Times Square on the big night. There’s a lot happening, so we don’t want to have to worry about unreliable fixtures in the elements. This year was a prime example. We had rain during our setup day, but we didn’t have to worry about putting out fixtures. Additionally, we had several pretty gnarly storms that soaked us right as we went live and well into the show.”

Grabowski has been working NYE shows in Times Square for almost twenty years and can only think of “maybe two years when the weather wasn’t bad for at least part of it”. Weather concerns are often compounded by the tight setup schedule the production crew has in advance of the NYE show. “You can only shut down chunks of Times Square for so much time”, says Grabowski. “We are in the shop to prep right after Christmas, and then are out on site on the 28th. We try to get things setup on the 28th and 29th, allowing 30th for programming and rehearsal, but sometimes weather has a big say in that. We’ve had years where the 30th is projected to be absolutely awful weather, so rehearsals get pushed up and my team and I have to be nimble to roll with how things go.”

As for the new Colorado Solo Bar 6 fixtures, Grabowski says the 24-cell linear fixtures played a key role in the NYE broadcast, specifically in creating a bright, colorful backdrop. The fixtures also help focus attention on the on-air talent by blocking out distractive backgrounds. “We have about a dozen of the Colorado Solo Bar 6, landing right in that big background that you see as you watch Ryan and guests have the countdown to midnight”, says Grabowski.

“Our platform is about 12-feet in the air”, he furthers. “This means we have pretty extensive railings. Even if they’re pristine, these railings are not terribly interesting to look at. Add to that there are egress lanes left in the middle of Times Square for emergency responders and the production crew - and it can get pretty bland looking. We want to show the energy and the vibe of the event, not gaps in the crowd and streetlights. It’s a little visual sleight of hand to help the mayhem of energy translate to the viewer at home.”

The rig also featured a generous amount of Chauvet Professional’s Maverick Storm 4 Profile and Color Strike M fixtures among others, all supplied by 4Wall, led onsite by Drew DeCorleto and Tara France. “The Maverick and Color Strike fixtures were doing a wide range of things”, says Grabowski. “They were covering railing, hiding, and masking. Why put up tape and black fabric, when we can add to the energy with these fixtures! The Storm 4s are just big old beasties in terms of output. That’s the other end of things - we had a helicopter shot covering our show, so not only did we need the small picture to look bold and dynamic, but the entire overview as well. Having these fixtures has made life easier for me and my very wonderful team: veterans Joey Cartagena and Paul Braile, along with newcomers Sam Short, Jeremy Dominik, and Nyle Farmer, not to mention programmers Ryan Philip and Cypress Staelin.”

Sarah Jakubasz, a well-established lighting designer and Grabowski’s longtime collaborator and member of the NYE show team, who was instrumental in converting the NYE rig to all IP65 rated, could not see the completion of her vision as she passed away last year. “Sarah set me down this path of slowly getting this rig to an IP rated place”, shares Grabowski. “She was the one who, when we discussed going IP rated, pointed out that it wasn’t just the waterproof aspect of the IP rating that mattered so much, but also the temperature rating. There are some IP rated fixtures that are fine in rain - but we also deal with temperatures well below freezing and for extended periods.”

“As we discussed it, ‘heat sink’ rapidly becomes ‘cold sink’, and once you push a fixture below its operating threshold, it takes a long, long time for it to recover”, he adds. “Because of her insight, we’ve taken our time to migrate everything over to IP rated. We want new and pretty and interesting - but we also need it to work in what is sometimes fairly adverse conditions. Now we have all of this Chauvet Professional IP gear out, not just in wet conditions but also frigid conditions, and it’s all been pretty bulletproof.”

(Photos: Chauvet Professional/The Lighting Design Group)

www.chauvetprofessional.com

© 1999 - 2025 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories