CHAUVET Professional Helps Design Team Realize Big Vision for Levity at Wintrust Arena

	"Our main challenge was to shoot lasers safely in every direction to cover the entire arena space while still looking cohesive," says Warffuel.

Ryan Warffuel and the team at Antic Studios had an ambitious creative vision for a show starring the electronic music trio Levity at Wintrust Arena, a massive effort involving 330 FB4-level lasers controlled over a sprawling network of nine laptops, along with 60 CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes.

Antic Studios, along with its collaborators, LEC Event Technology and Slick Lasers, transformed the 10,000-plus-capacity downtown venue into a vortex of light and color.

"This was a 360 show in an arena with many very different asymmetrical levels," Warffuel says. "So, our main challenge was to shoot lasers safely in every direction to cover the entire arena space while still looking cohesive. To achieve this, we shot the lasers in and across the arena, out from the center towards the crowd, up and around the 'Lasership,' and even had some crowd scanning lasers shooting into the audience. This took a lot of careful placing, zoning, and planning of the different looks."

Warffuel and his team also put a lot of thought into where they positioned their Color STRIKE M fixtures, supplied by Antic Studios with additional lighting units, along with audio, rigging, power, and networking from LEC Event Technology. The majority of the lasers were furnished by Slick Lasers, with additional units from Antic Studios and Levity.

"We made sure to have plenty of them placed at great viewing angles so they could all be seen easily," Warffuel says. "The tilt function is also very useful in this situation, so we can adjust them to all the different levels of the arena.

"STRIKE Ms are great for a show like this," Warffuel continues. "They are very bright, so they are able to cut through all the lasers, but they also are pixel mappable, giving lots of programming options to complement the lasers at the same time. We made sure to program lighting, lasers, and video to play off each other, and give each element its time to shine without having to fight each other. We needed extensive planning and practice to hit the specific cues."

The team included Alyssa Miller (video director/VJ/cameras), Owen Howell (lighting director/LD), Corbin Sharpe (laser director/operator). "We wanted to make sure we didn't use all the different looks and effects/tricks right away in the beginning and brought them in throughout the set to make sure it kept evolving and felt fresh," says Warffuel, who added that the team strove to ensure that the audience was "fully engaged throughout the whole set."