Jack Morton Worldwide, the global brand experience agency, created London New Year’s firework experience this year with the help of a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console.
Lighting programmer Paul Cook used the console to control the 18-universe lightshow that supported the firework display.
The display, which took place over the River Thames and the Coca-Cola London Eye, is a unique global showcase for the iconic city, reflecting its dynamism, creativity and openness.
Synchronized and triggered by GPS to Big Ben’s chimes, the 12-minute show lit up the River Thames with 2,000 lighting cues and 12,000 fireworks producing 50,000 projectiles. The FOH station, with its MagicQ MQ500 Stadium desk and MagicQ MQ80 backup, was situated on the river bank directly opposite the Coca-Cola London Eye. From this position, the console controlled the 640 RGB panel lights permanently installed on the Coca-Cola London Eye, as well as 32 profile fixtures, 32 blinders, 30 LED hybrid units and 16 batten washes that were brought in for the spectacular New Year’s Eve event.
“We were extremely happy with the MQ500 console,” said Cook, who worked the console with Durham Marenghi. “It operated superbly controlling lights in sync with the music to support the fireworks. The advanced power of the onboard processing was quite impressive, allowing us to output a large number of universes directly from the console without external processing nodes.”
“The built-in visualizer system was also used to great effect to demo the show to the creative team from Jack Morton and their end client from the Greater London Authority,” continued Cook. “We found that during the build-up to the show the response speed of the visualizer was about five times faster than those of competing systems. We used it as a real-world reference to double check the pre-programming. This was critical, since we only had about one hour of real-time testing with the actual rig in advance of the show.”
“The New Year’s Eve firework display has become synonymous with London and its people,” said Jim Donald, director of production, Jack Morton Worldwide. “We’re incredibly proud to be part of creating such an iconic and globally recognized event.”
