Lofty Trim Heights No Problem for MAC 2000 Wash at 47th Annual Grammy Awards

Two of America’s most important and most watched awards shows occur in the month of February, which means a busy time of year for award-winning lighting designer Bob Dickinson.

Two weeks prior to the Academy Awards, Dickinson was again called upon by Grammy officials to create the lighting environment for the 47th Grammy Awards, the music industry’s premier awards night and a who’s who of popular music.

Broadcast by CBS television, this year’s broadcast again featured an elaborate stage set and large intelligent lighting rig that included approximately 200 MAC 2000 Wash and 36 Atomic 3000 strobe fixtures.

The Grammy Awards took place on February 13th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Holding the Grammy’s in an 18,000+ seat, very vertical basketball arena poses challenges, yet the abundance of space also presents an opportunity to create intricate truss and set designs.

The multiple stage set design by Steve Bass included an 80 ft high tower and three levels of stacked backlit projection screens that the crew came to call “condos.” On top of that was trussing - and lots of it! The huge vertical truss towers and horizontal truss cubes structure spanned some 50 ft high by 120 ft wide and created an immense sense of scale. In each grid were MAC 2000 Wash along with other intelligent fixtures.

With quite a lot of projection that needed to be lowered - which meant a backlight position that needed to be higher than that - the lighting ended up being quite high, explains assistant lighting designer Dan Rood of Full Flood, Inc, whose 3D truss designs turned the trussing into a scenic element in its own right. Such a high ceiling meant that lighting fixtures needed to deliver color from a trim height of 80 feet.

Bob Dickinson commented on his use of the MAC 2000 Wash on the Grammy’s and Academy Awards, “The MAC 2K Wash unit continues to establish itself as the most versatile and reliable high discharge wash light in the industry. Good color mixing combined with exceptional output make it the perfect tool for television, especially broadcasts with very high trim heights. The Grammy’s had trims of over eighty feet and the Oscars were some 45 feet. Also considering a live television broadcast is a one chance circumstance, dependability is very important. I have come to trust the MAC 2K as a solid player, a very dependable light. The MAC 2K Wash is a lot of light when you want it, where you need it and you know the damn thing will be working when the cue is called!”

The MAC 2000 Wash and Atomics were supplied by California-based Production Resource Group (PRG) with Martin manufacturer support by Martin’s Ray Whitton and Martin Tanzarelli.

Lighting Designer: Bob Dickinson
Assistant Lighting Designer: Dan Reed
Lighting Director, Automated Board Operator: Andy O'Reily and Matt Firestone
Lighting Director: Bob Barnhart
Associate Lighting Director: Jon Kusner, Ed McCarthy
Conventional Board Op: Gil Samuelian
Crew Chief: Steve Oleniczak