W-DMX on Cowboys & Aliens

W-DMX by Wireless Solution Sweden AB was part of the recent Hollywood blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens. The film, which features a star-studded cast including Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford is about a spaceship that arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys and natives are all that stand in their way.

The Hollywood crew shot on location in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The action-packed sequences involved an old west town, full of cowboys, horses, and wagons, being invaded by aliens in low-flying spacecrafts firing lasers at the town. Mike Bauman was the chief lighting technician, with Scott Barnes as programmer, using six universes of data. Five of the universes were run via five W-DMX Transmitters. See the dramatic filming sequence at www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2c8xY248f0.

Barnes said, "The total number of receivers was around 17. We had three alien speeder rigs that flew over the town. Each of those had a W-DMX receiver. Then we had 12 condors with lights, and each of those had a receiver. All the Spydercam rigs had two PRG Bad Boys and a laser. One of them also had a Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500. There were four alien light condors that each had two Bad Boys and two Alpha Beam 1500s. Then we also had eight condors that had two T8 Lumapanels, one [Philips] Vari*Lite VL1000 TSD, and one Alpha Profile 1200."

Barnes added, "The town was built with two main streets that intersect in the middle. Each of the four sections had dimmers rigged inside various buildings. Since there would be horses and wagons running through the dirt streets during filming, we could not connect each corner with regular DMX. It would get trampled. So we used W-DMX for the dimmer universe too, and put receivers where needed. The Spydercam rigs that ran over the town were around 600' long and ran at around 45mph. All the transmitters for the rig were on the rooftop of one of the building in the center of town."

Josh Thatcher was the media programmer for the film. "I've been using W-DMX on several major Hollywood movies for years," he said. "It's always been reliable and solves a lot of problems in challenging scenes."

"This was a fantastic use of W-DMX," says Niclas Arvidsson, CEO of Wireless Solution, "In addition to the very cool effect of the flying alien ships, the crew was able to solve the challenge of lighting the old west town without having cable running through dangerous traffic areas. If you haven't seen the movie, it's well worth your while. It was all very clever."