It marks five years since ARRI's SkyPanel was released for the first time and changed the lighting industry forever. To celebrate, we collected the seven most unusual installations of SkyPanel that we have seen to date.
1. ARRI SkyPanel 360-C illuminates the iconic atrium of New York’s Guggenheim Museum
Acclaimed lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker shares his experience of lighting a true monument of modernism—Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. For this project, he chose 2 ARRI SkyPanel 360-C LED soft lights to create “a really beautiful, otherworldly experience.”
Read the full story here: https://www.arri.com/en/company/arri-news/news-stories/news-stories-2020/arri-skypanel-360-c-illuminates-the-iconic-atrium-of-new-york-s-guggenheim-museum
2. Coachella HiPO
Art Installation HiPO was featured for the second time at Coachella 2019 by creative duet Dedo Vabo. A joint venture of Vanessa Bonet and Derek Doublin, along with a team of dedicated fabricators, engineers, fellow artists, lighting designers, etc. built a giant space ship installation. Numerous live performers dressed in HiPO costumes and operated the ship, pushing all sorts of random buttons in various displays from the bottom to the top of the space ship. Each room had a unique mood and lighting design. A HiPO performer would click a button and trigger a particular pre-programmed lighting cue.
Doublin says: "We used a variety of moods and SkyPanel effects the performers pushed through: cop car, party mode, color chase; every single effect that a SkyPanel can do was in that installation."
Lighting by @Felix Lighting
Learn more: https://www.dedovabo.com/hipo
3. Dan + Shay live performance at the 61st GRAMMYs
The 61st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 10, 2019, at Staples Center in Los Angeles and was produced by Ken Ehrlich of AEG Ehrlich Ventures. For the seventh year in a row, Raj Kapoor, of Raj Kapoor Productions, the creative mind behind the Grammy's live production, partnered with lighting designers Bob Dickson and Noah Mitz from Full Flood, Inc. to use light to enhance the live musical performances.
The production team's approach was to create a unique visual experience of artistic design and spectacle that best represents the emotion and individuality of each artist. That approach was a success and led to the Grammy Awards being nominated for four Emmy Awards this year, including one for lighting design. Mitz and Dickinson's innovative approach to lighting design was best exemplified during the 2019 Grammy Award-winning country artists Dan + Shay in their live acoustic performance of the power ballad "Tequila." For this performance, Mitz and Dickinson worked with Kapoor on a creative brief, which included a unique use of the ARRI SkyPanel.
Read the full story here: https://www.arri.com/en/company/arri-news/news-stories/news-stories-2019/arri-skypanel-s360-c-at-2019-grammy-awards
4. SkyWall
2D Rental house in Toronto, Canada, originated a new kind of way to shoot with SkyPanels. The SkyWall, a game that tests your hand-eye coordination, comprised an array of 30 x SkyPanel S60-Cs. A player has one minute to hit as many green targets as possible using basic NERF guns. One of the 30 SkyPanels changes color from red to green at a rapid speed that increases with every successful hit. The amount of successful hits determines the winner.
"We programmed the panels using a micro-computer and Peso sensors attached to the lights. It was overall a basic system that the micro-computer outputted a DMX signal and ran the lights. It also received the data from the sensors when the nerf ball hit the light fixture. We only made use of the DMX. We used HSL mode to some degree to keep things simple, and controlling the lights was a breeze from something like a micro-computer, which is not a typical communication system," explains David Dvir, the owner of 2D House.
5. Little Cinema's state-of-the-art virtual events platform
SkyPanel S60-C has been a go-to live stream lighting fixture for years, but the demand picked up during quarantine. At the end of June, LA-based rental house “Kinetic Lighting” named SkyPanel S60-C their most popular quarantine fixture. In the past six months, SkyPanels have been spotted at many home studios across the world illuminating live streams and virtual events.
Lighting Designer Andrew Schmedake explains: "Amidst the industry shut-down, I've pivoted to using the SkyPanels on projects where clients need studio-quality production design and lighting looks while performing in their own homes. The ARRI SkyPanel has been indispensable in evenly lighting on-camera performers, especially while color-matching to digital content laid in on green screens. Using Ben Peoples Industries CineMiranda controller, we've been able to set lighting on multiple home studios across the country remotely. I lit performers in New York, Connecticut, and Los Angeles, curating their lighting to every new digital background that our virtual artists sent our way in real-time, all from master control in my Los Angeles apartment."
Project: Little Cinema's digital after party for the virtual premiere of Snowpiercer on TNT.
Client: Little Cinema (http://littlecinema.net/)
Lighting Designer: Andrew Schmedake (https://www.schmedakelightingdesign.com/)
6. Flugoween party
Every year NY-based rental house Flug throws one of the best parties in town for Halloween - Flugoween. It is an eclectic mix of imagination and film technology that puts you in the middle of the action to merge with the world of image-making through impressive lighting installations featuring more than 30 SkyPanels.
7. The Paris-Hamburg 2017/18 Métiers d’art show - CHANEL
The legendary brand, CHANEL hosted The CHANEL Paris-Hamburg 2017/18 Métiers d'art showe that took place in Hamburg, Germany. The show was illuminated with 220 SkyPanels S60-Cs.
Lighting design by ARF&YES (www.arfyes.com)
SkyPanels & custom structure provided by PRG-Belgium (www.prg.com/be/en)
Share your most unusual projects with us at lighting-info@arri.com
