Once upon a time, lighting effects were used to illuminate set elements. Now, with the nearly limitless opportunities LED technology provides, lighting has become a scenic element in its own right.
Newer LED technology, which has more than 1.6 million potential color combinations versus traditional incandescent bulbs, allows light to interact, transform, and create new environments for audiences.
According to Adam Burghout, head of the lighting department at AV Concepts, lighting has transformative power.
"Making the most of current LED technology means lighting can play more than a supportive role. The movement lighting can create gives events an organic, fluid nature that guides the attention, tone, mood, and energy of a space. It can even help create new levels of immersion for audiences, often in subtle but impactful ways," he says.
"The opportunities are endless and are giving lighting designers an expanded arsenal of brushes to paint with.”
Consider these tips when planning lighting for events:
- Lighting is now the cohesive through-line for immersive storytelling. This means it is important to create event experiences that offer more opportunities to leverage light, color, and motion to draw attention and evoke emotion.
- The newest LED systems are smaller, lighter, faster, more versatile, and offer lower power consumption, which makes them more space-effective, easier to transport, and reduces the carbon footprint.
- Experiment with texture by creating blow-through effects for fog, haze, or smoke that can create a multi-dimensional, tangible effect for LED lighting.
- The latest lighting technology is changing the iterative process of designing events. Creative and technical teams can work more collaboratively to push the boundaries of each system and bring new visions to life.
"New lighting technology has made the creative process more fluid than ever before," says Burghout. "Teams aren't working independently and then taking time to figure out if they can do something. Designers and technicians are collaborating, in real-time, to make ideas a reality."
" Once relegated to a supporting role, lighting now has the power to be the star of an event.
Learn more at: http://www.avconcepts.com/the-transformative-power-of-lighting/.
