Lightswitch Installs Rig in F&M Bank Amphitheatre with Help from CHAUVET Professional

	"The goal was to provide some visual interest through color and dynamic texture," Markowitz says.

The new F&M Bank Amphitheatre of Long Beach, which opened June 25 with a concert by native son Snoop Dogg and was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "Hollywood Bowl by the Water," will be replaced sometime in 2036 by a new, more permanent facility.

Adding an engaging visual element to the 11,000-capacity venue near the Queen Mary is a lighting design by Lightswitch that features CHAUVET Professional Ovation Reve E-3 and COLORdash Accent 5X IP fixtures.

The Lightswitch team, led by director John Martin, senior designer Ruben Markowitz, and designer Shawn Nielson, was pulled into the project by client Dan Schartoff about seven months before the amphitheater opened. They were tasked with developing solutions for the entire site area lighting, including egress and general circulation.

Present at the site to execute the design, Lightswitch provided on-site installation, aiming, and programming direction. The site and house lighting were supplied by 3G Productions; project manager Juan Segovia led procurement and the installation team on "an incredibly fast timeline."

Since the entire site is considered a temporary installation, Lightswitch worked carefully with engineers from the city and client to develop temporary lighting structures that would allow them to enact the design, with minimal disturbance to the rest of the site plan.

"Our biggest challenge, in addition to a tight budget and schedule, was the temporary nature of the installation," Markowitz says. "All lighting positions had to be temporary, or harness temporary structures called for in the site plan. Due to the budget available for lighting, the entire site had to be lit with a minimum number of fixtures, making the positions' locations and design even more critical. Power and data also had to be run mostly in a temporary manner, using minimal conduit pathways."

Given these challenges, as well as the proximity of the site to The Port of Long Beach Harbor, the IP65-rated CHAUVET Professional fixtures, with their versatility, compact size, and high output, were a good fit.

A collection of 41 Ovation Reve E-3 color-rendering ellipsoidal-style fixtures was positioned at the entrance and in the VIP area of the amphitheater. "The goal was to provide some visual interest through color and dynamic texture," Markowitz says. "While the rest of the site lighting can change color, these areas required a little more visual interest. This Rêve's integrated IP gobo rotators provided a perfect -- and inexpensive -- way of augmenting the lighting one step further. The selected gobos were intended to recall some of the graphic patterns printed into other site elements."

Upcoming attractions at the venue include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Live in Concert; Deep Purple with special guest Kansas; and Five Finger Death Punch with Cody Jinks and Eva Under Fire.