Some unique lighting razzmatazz has been added to the near 20,000-capacity Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, with the world’s first installation of GLP’s monstrous MAD MAXX CW LED fat-beam searchlights. This will give the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team and Cleveland Monsters ice hockey team, who share the facility, a unique and dynamic rock’n’roll-style environment to enhance the matchday experience.
The MAD MAXX units were specified by highly acclaimed production designer Eric Wade, creative director and vice-president of Dallas, Texas-based Crossfade Design.
Billed as the first true fat-beam LED fixture, with a massive 750mm beam diameter, MAD MAXX’s wide light output matches the beam’s diameter, which is adjustable by a virtual iris, while the color wheel provides an extra layer of animation. This gives the fixture an imposing presence.
Crossfade had serviced the Rocket Arena for around a decade, and according to its lighting designer, Sam Brown – who project-managed the installation and co-designed the rig with Wade – the initial direction had come from the owners.
“They said they wanted to have more lights than the [former] Staples Center, the Crypto.com Arena [in Los Angeles],” he explains. “So what started as an initial conversation developed into us creating something super unique, and filling the entire stadium in the round with light.”
But it wasn’t so much the volume of fixtures Crossfade was concerned with as creating high drama from a never-previously-seen fixture – with eight massive-diameter beams enveloping the arena and firing down over a distance of some 140 feet, MAD MAXX CW exhibits all the power advantages of the classic xenon 7K searchlight but with a whole other library of versatility and gymnastics.
As for the fixtures’ size, Eric Wade quips: “There’s nothing easy about installing a Volkswagen in your lighting rig!” In fact, his overriding memory was watching the nonplussed stage hands when they first unboxed the units on site. “They just stood back in awe. You should have seen 20 stage hands, all with their mobile camera phones out, saying, ‘Oh my God, what is that?!’”
The idea behind MAD MAXX had originally been initiated by GLP’s Mark Ravenhill, with whom Wade has enjoyed a long and enduring relationship. He says, “When Mark says, ‘You’ve got to see this, you’re going to love it’, you’d better be sure to listen!
“He sent me a video and I took it on trust. GLP will do whatever it takes to make sure we succeed, and the first time I saw them fired up on the floor was in my shop. Everything worked like a charm.”
Adam Hines, director of game presentation at the stadium, was equally impressed and immediately sanctioned the order.
The installation team only had a small window to strip out the old system and get the new rig in the air. “So it was a case of practicality meeting our design eye,” says Brown. “Our initial idea was that we were thinking War of the Worlds.”
Eric Wade, who has worked at the top level of touring lighting design over five decades, was delighted with the fixture’s performance and output: “It’s the closest thing I have seen to the old Syncrolites and I’m very excited. We are going to add the frost filter when it becomes available and we can then flood the whole floor with that.”
And it is that same versatility that impressed Brown: “With the pixel mapping and color changing wheel, MAD MAXX CW will provide the eye candy as well. One really cool thing was when we reflected it off the mirrorball and we could see all the pixellation happening in the reflection.”
The Crossfade Design team, which also included Brandon Wade in the latter stages, turned to another specialist, Matt Panther at Reliable Truss, to create bespoke mounting solutions, with the grid raking at 20°. “When the truss is tilted, the hinge piece that goes on the truss pivots with the light – so that the light remains level however you move the truss. This is because all our pods are at an angle all the time.” Adding motorcycle pistons further ensured alignment and level stabilization.
Crossfade’s creative director also recalls that the hockey team wanted to focus all the lights on the center of the rink, “until one of the guys shouted, ‘Turn them off – they are melting the ice!’”
Earlybird Visual’s Eric Marchwinski made a fixture profile for the console and started the programming, joined by Sam Brown, Brandon Wade, Aria Hailey and Grey Nicholson. They even had a Depence fixture profile created, enabling them to run pre-viz programming as well.
Virtual offsite programming at Crossfade’s base enables them to run the show file remotely. “We just need a console and a bridge unit and they can log straight into our computers,” he says.
The Crossfade Design team can reflect with satisfaction in knowing that MAD MAXX CW has made the Cavaliers unique. “They are now different from everybody else, and the team others want to follow,” concludes Eric Wade.
The Rocket Arena is already contemplating extended usage, with pre-show entertainment and the many punctuations during a game with half time, time-outs, cheerleader performances – not to mention shows like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction that come through the venue.
