Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were given a dazzling backdrop to their performances at the Super Bowl XLVIII Half Time show at the MetLife Stadium, New Jersey, by Bob Barnhart’s spectacular lighting.
Barnhart incorporated 220 Ayrton MagicPanel 602 fixtures into his design to enhance the vibrancy and dynamism of the performances on stage.
The MagicPanel fixtures were arrayed in two massive, raked banks which flanked the performance area and served to extend the visual impact of the stage within the massive 82,500-seat stadium. The MagicPanel banks were arranged in two ‘chevron’ shapes which were mounted on custom-made risers that rose from 4 inches at the front of the stage to 11 inches at the back with each row staggered to sit 6 inches higher than the one in front.
At Mars’ request, the show was to replicate an atmosphere as close to a live rock concert as possible, a factor which helped determine the high-octane style of Barnhart’s design. The MagicPanel banks gave Barnhart a blank canvas which he could use to amaze the audience or integrate with the rest of the lighting – possibilities which he used to the full by employing MagicPanel as both a lighting fixture and a projector through which to run video content.
Ayrton MagicPanel 602 is a moving head LED beam projector equipped with thirty-six 15W Osram RGBW emitters in a 6 x 6 array. Each emitter projects a tight, powerful 7.5° beam and can be controlled individually or used collectively to produce a collimated 14,000 lumen shaft of light.
Under individual control, the emitters can be pixel mapped or driven by video via Art-Net or Kling-Net. To supplement the graphic possibilities this control provides, MagicPanel 602 can be continuously rotated on both pan and tilt axes, which adds a dynamic dimensional effect to beams individually projected by mapped emitters. MagicPanel is obviously also controllable via DMX-512 and is RDM compatible.
Super Bowl XLVIII was the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in cold weather, but despite their IP20 rating, the MagicPanel fixtures were able to cope with the harsh conditions. “The potential for severe weather was all the challenge we needed,” says Barnhart. “We covered the MagicPanels when we were not working with them but they did seem to hold up ok.”
