Latin America. Indoor and outdoor film and television production is discovering the numerous benefits that a powerful, fully automated IP65 LED luminaire can provide on a set. Ask lighting designer/programmer Jeff Pardee, who has been using Elation Professional's Proteus Maximus in several recent projects.
The Proteus Maximus, a 50,000-lumens LED moving head that functions as a profile light, beam or light, is commonly used to illuminate some of the world's largest outdoor shows and events. Its 950W white LED motor offers a brightness level that can reach great distances, an attribute that Pardee finds useful in sets where complex camera work requires the support equipment to be out of sight.
Pardee, a former concert lighting designer who moved into film and broadcast lighting several years ago, sought a moving head that he could place at a distance while maintaining intensity, even when using colors or breakout patterns. "When you're filming, to stay out of the camera shot, you have to place things where they can't be seen, which means placing the lighting too far away. I needed an accessory with strength, something with color that I could use for hard edges or breaking patterns, but do it from afar."
Initiation
While working on a film project that required the 4th Street Bridge in Los Angeles to be illuminated from the other side of a large construction site, Pardee needed a powerful accessory that could be projected from hundreds of meters away. He considered several options, including the Proteus Maximus, and was able to borrow a unit from a colleague on a nearby project to test. At noon, to show his brilliance to others on set, he was able to light up a nearby building from across a highway. "It was one o'clock in the afternoon, in broad daylight, and you could easily see the opening of the building," he says. "That convinced everyone. Imagine if it was 2 a.m. at the same distance!"
That was his first experience with the device, which he ended up using. "They worked phenomenally. The condors we had the fittings on were at a distance of two-tenths of a mile to half a mile from the bridge and it was perfectly lit, with no shadows and no variations in production," he said. "In fact, we ended up running them at 65% because they were too bright." Part of that same project required lighting an outdoor basketball court as part of a continuous shooting scene. "We used the Maximus specifically for that because I could have them out of range, at the other end of the block in fully elevated condors, but we still got excellent light levels."
Pardee says that when they evaluate lighting they also look for fixtures that can run on a lower amount of energy. In the 4th Street Bridge project and downtown park, they ran the Maximus units using a small 6000-watt generator located half a mile away. "That same setup with offloading accessories would have required a much larger generator and grid system. It's amazing to me that the Maximus can do what it does, project so bright and so far, with the energy consumption it has."
The project turned out to be a good introduction to the LED luminaire for Pardee and gave him the opportunity to play with the lights, test them in various colors, break patterns, prisms, etc. to see if they kept their brightness. "That was the defining moment for me," he said. "I knew that if I ever needed these kinds of accessories again, these are the ones I would choose."
Show de Billie Eilish Prime Day
The need for a powerful LED moving head has frequently arisen for the designer who says he has used the Maximus in production sets a dozen times to date. A recent example is Billie Eilish's Prime Day Show musical special that aired on June 17 on Prime Video. The show fused music and narration as the Grammy-winning singer performed in the middle of an immersive Parisian set (actually filmed on Universal's backlot). The cinematographer of the Prime Day shoot was Christopher Ripley; Gaffer was Mathias Peralta.
Pardee turned to the waterproof Maximus to fulfill a number of roles in production. "We used them to pierce a window to give a nice sunrise effect while it was raining, for example. We soaked them in water for three days and had no problem." Pardee accessed Maximus' full-spectrum color mixing system with variable CTO to create the reds, amber, and daylight color needed to mimic a sunrise. Then, for a night scene, he painted with purples, reds and blues to create a Parisian night look. "I also used them as a backlight or for hard edge lighting in established buildings to give a crisp look working in conjunction with a soft-edge accessory with which we combine the color temperature to get a nice, even look."
Maximus' luminaires operated from two condor positions in the musical special, two luminaires on each condor firing the building set from 300-400 feet away from the camera. Pardee then turned the props around 180 degrees to fire in the opposite direction, up the street and toward buildings in a large breakout pattern, a throw that was closer to 500 feet. "You can't take that hit from that distance from anything else," he concludes. "Having those colors and effects and with that power, they've just been ideal."
