Who would have thought that a former church gymnasium in Knoxville, Tennessee could be transformed into a host site for glamorous weddings, lavish holiday parties and other upscale events? Forget smoke and mirrors, the always-booked Kingston Ballroom at Bridgewater Place now has a new house lighting system befitting of a well-tooled concert hall.
Stage lighting specialist Limelite Design Service installed the new LED lighting system, which features 80 elektraLite eyeBall downlights that are pixel-mapped so they can sweep colorful images across the room.
“This is the only venue in Knoxville with this type of house lighting,” says André Huff, Limelite Design Service’s principal and founder. “It can be white for a business conference, or change colors to match a wedding theme. You can even have a disco party going on at one end of the hall for a wedding while the other side of the room is lit for the reception. A popular look is to have half of the lights white with the other half the color of the wedding for illumination and mood.”
Aside from being used on nuptial celebrations and various corporate events, the eyeBalls also recently shone on a weeklong webcast, holding the attention of Internet viewers.
Not the typical rigging for this kind of rental room, Limelite hung a 50-foot by 75-foot truss grid that raises the eyeBalls up and down, a unique feature of the design. Huff says the thinking was to “bring the ceiling to the workers to hang decor off of rather than having to purchase and spend hours in a lift.”
The new elektraLite eyeBalls replaced the old gym’s antiquated metal-halide lamps, and an Avolites Titan One controls the pixel-mapping feature. “We looked at a couple of different options but in the end chose to use the Titan One and send the DMX via Artnet to a decoder box on the truss,” Huff explains.
A small space just outside the Kingston Ballroom’s entry doors was the perfect place for the lighting system’s computer, while a touchscreen hung on the other side of the wall controls the system. “Making use of the console’s macro functions allowed me to write single button pushes that could go through the console and release anything captured and only play the look in the scene,” Huff adds.
The lighting designer went on to praise “the business approach of elektraLite. Norm, their engineer, is a great guy and designs a very nice product, making sure that the fixtures are built to strict quality standards.”
For more info on Bridgewater Place, visit www.bridgewaterplacetn.com. Limelite Design Service can likewise be found online at www.limelitedesignservice.com.