Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Port Lighting Systems and Elation for First Night Boston

31/03/2020

Port Lighting Systems and Elation for First Night Boston posted: 31/03/2020

Boston is a town with fantastic traditions and one festive custom that Bostonians have enjoyed since 1975 is First Night Boston, New England's biggest New Year's Eve celebration. Produced by Conventures, Inc., this past season's festivities were lit by Port Lighting Systems using Elation weatherproof luminaires. First Night Boston is an event the New Hampshire-based lighting specialists have worked for many years.

First Night Boston may be a one-day affair but like any large event, it is a multi-day setup. As veterans of First Night Boston and other outdoor events, Port Lighting Systems knew the secret to its success would be carefully selecting equipment and crew. We tapped team members with experience lighting in all weather conditions, and chose a combination of outdoor-rated fixtures, equipment designed to protect fixtures from the elements, and back-up gear should anything fail, said Port Lighting's Graham Edmondson, who served as Production Manager on the project.

Port Lighting Systems also designed all the lighting looks for the event, which included a light show in Copley Square along with illumination of the Ice Pavilion, the mainstage in front of Trinity Church Boston, the facades of the surrounding buildings, and the midnight countdown clock. In the past, we've projected patterns onto the Fairmont Copley building in Copley Square and the Boston Public Library, Edmondson explains. This year we wanted to add a base color layer to the buildings as well.

With the express goal of bringing energy and excitement to the New Year's revelry, no matter the weather conditions, Port Lighting turned to a lighting system that included Elation IP65-rated luminaires. It was great not having to worry about fixtures getting wet or exposed to the elements. While this year was relatively mild, we had a couple of days of freezing rain and high winds, and all of the Elation fixtures had no problems in the elements, stated Edmondson, noting that winter weather in New England can range from polar vortex to wet monsoon conditions.

To light both the Boston Public Library and Fairmont buildings, Port Lighting erected a series of truss towers. The company owns 48 Elation SixPar 300IP color-changing fixtures and have had great success using them for similar projects in the past, according to Edmondson. These fixtures had a throw of 100'-150' and provided bright, bold colors on the buildings. Color washing the Fairmont were 16 SixPar 300IPs working with some weatherproof moving head fixtures while 24 SixPar 300IPs colored the Boston Public Library. The SixPar 300IPs were fantastic. We were concerned about the long throw reading in a downtown atmosphere even at night, but were really pleased.

Port also wanted to use IP rated moving head fixtures to light the Boston Public Library rather than using domes as they have in the past. Their choice for the Boston Public Library was 6 Proteus Hybrid multifunctional moving heads to project gobos onto the building, with 4 Proteus Beam fixtures used for aerial beam effects. The zoom range of the Proteus Hybrids was great, and the speed of the Proteus Beams really allowed us to do some fun aerial effects, Edmondson comments.

A series of seasonal looks changed throughout the evening to the delight of the crowd and with the use of dynamic elements like changing focus, gobo rotation and aerial effects, the projections were kept visually vibrant. Several looks came out particularly well on both buildings, says Edmondson, especially the scenes with snowflake gobos. Obviously it's winter in New England and while there wasn't any snow on the ground, it felt really festive to be in Copley Square surrounded by snowflakes, he concludes.

Production Manager: Graham Edmondson

Stage Lighting Designer: Pat Richards

Environmental Lighting Director: Kyle Stetson

All creative LED elements programmed and operated by Lee Mulder and Zane Kiser.

About Elation Professional

Based in California with facilities in Florida and Mexico City, as well as European offices in The Netherlands, Elation designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of innovative lighting and video products known for its superior performance, excellent efficiency, and outstanding price:value ratio, all backed by a hard-earned reputation for Total Support. Through nearly three decades of intelligent lighting development, our mission has always been simple: to provide best-in-class products and service while offering the best value:performance ratio in the industry, helping show designers and producers achieve their vision. From discharge to LED, intelligent to conventional, Elation products continue to be a part of the industry's most exciting projects across the globe and our list of references is always growing.
LINK: https://www.live-production.tv/news/shows/port-lighting-systems-and-el...
See more stories from liveproduction

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

16/07/2026

Complete spectrum of innovation from British exhibitors a...

33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...

16/07/2026

Hitomi Broadcast to showcase HDR colour verification and...

Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...

16/07/2026

SMPTE Kicks Off 110th Anniversary Campaign

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/07/2026

Cox Media Group Taps Waymark for AI Ad Creation Tools

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/07/2026

Parks: Cable Broadband Sub Losses Slow Down

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/07/2026

CatchLight, Sony Launch Initiative to Help Local Newsrooms

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/07/2026

XR Launches XR ONE Ad Ops Platform

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/07/2026

Zixi and Comcast Technology Solutions Partner to Provide...

Zixi, a leader in live video delivery and workflow orchestration, and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) today announced a strategic new integration to deliver ...

16/07/2026

Blackmagic Design Cameras Capture Immersive Flight for New Cirrus App

Blackmagic Design Cameras Capture Immersive Flight for New Cirrus App Brie Clayton July 15, 2026 0 Comments Leader in Personal Aviation taps URSA Cin...

16/07/2026

XenData Announces LTO Archive Appliances with both File and S3 Object Storage Interfaces

XenData Announces LTO Archive Appliances with both File and S3 Object Storage In...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup semi-finals deliver whopper audiences as RT Player surpasses 21 million streams across the tournament to date

Together the semi-finals had a combined reach of 1.98 million unique individuals...

15/07/2026

Inside DAZNs Multi-Market World Cup Effort With CTO Sandeep Tiku

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is a big deal for DAZN, which has distribution rights in three markets: Italy, Spain, and Japan. Each requires a different editorial app...

15/07/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Qumulo's Chris Horn on Powering Global Media Workflows Across Edge, Core, and Cloud

As sports-media organizations manage rapidly growing content libraries and incre...

15/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: Inside the HBS Non-Live London Production Hub

HBS director of digital Johannes Franken talks SVG Europe through the operation built to serve FIFA World Cup 2026 rights holders remotely from Stratford, east ...

15/07/2026

IBC2026 to Spotlight AI, Live Sports Production, Creator Economy, and Trust in Media

IBC has unveiled the conference program for IBC2026, with this year's event ...

15/07/2026

Vanessa Paradis Tour Adopts Sennheiser Spectera Wireless Ecosystem for 2026 Production

Software-defined wideband RF platform supports 96-kHz monitoring, streamlined fr...

15/07/2026

Telos Alliance Integrates AudioShake Source Separation Into Minnetonka AudioTools Server

New AI-powered module enables broadcasters and content owners to extract dialogu...

15/07/2026

AIMS Schedules Second IPMX Product Certification Event for August

Weeklong gathering at EBU headquarters will test new IPMX capabilities and expand certified product ecosystem...

15/07/2026

Force Tech Appoints Bryan Adams as Vice President of Integration

Force Tech has announced the appointment of Bryan Adams, CTS, as Vice President of Integration. Adams will oversee AV and broadcast integration project delivery...

15/07/2026

USA Sports and Bundesliga Announce Exclusive Multi-Year U.S. Media Rights Agreement

USA Sports has announced an exclusive English-language agreement with the Bundes...

15/07/2026

Inside ITV Sport's Stunning FIFA World Cup Studio in New York City With Paul McNamara

ITV Sport's FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage has been produced from one of the m...

15/07/2026

CatchLight, Sony Launch Equipment Initiative for Local Visual Journalists

Program will provide professional camera kits, training, and technical support to participating local newsrooms...

15/07/2026

CornerstoneSF Installs FOR-A HVS-Q12 Switcher in New UHD Production Facility

San Francisco church becomes first U.S. deployment of the 2 M/E production switcher...

15/07/2026

Steve Bornstein Joins Advisory Board of Scott Cokers New Global MMA Promotion

Former ESPN and NFL Network executive to advise startup league on media, distribution, technology, and fan engagement...

15/07/2026

Space City Home Network Executive Producer John Valek on Leaning Into Innovation, Access, and Opportunity

The Houston-based RSN is the live-game home of the Astros and Rockets...

15/07/2026

Freqport unveil the Dual FreqInOut FO1-2RK

Launched alongside new FreqSoft installer Designed to bridge the gap between hardware and software, Freqport's FreqInOut FO1 unit provides a simple way ...

15/07/2026

Expressive E's Summer Offers

Save up to 55% on software until 23 July 2026 Expressive E have just launched their Summer Offer sale, with discounts of up to 55% now applied across their ...

15/07/2026

Peel Stems 2 from zplane

Real-time stem-separation tool updated zplane have recently released a new and improved version of their real-time stem-separation plug-in which they say ma...

15/07/2026

Baby Audio SubCulture

A new benchmark in bass enhancement Described as a new benchmark in bass enhancement , Baby Audio's latest release has been designed to augment the lo...

15/07/2026

DMC Production Reimagines Live OB with Calrec

DMC Production's AR 1 and AR 2 units reverse the conventional OB workflow, keeping all production-critical processing at the venue while operators work remo...

15/07/2026

FCC to Vote on Replacing National Broadcast Ownership Cap

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/07/2026

ATSC Updates Industry Audio Loudness Guidance

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/07/2026

GigaCloud and Cubbit partner to deliver sovereign and res...

GigaCloud, a leading Ukrainian cloud service provider, and Cubbit, the first geo-distributed cloud storage enabler, today announced a new Business Alliance Part...

15/07/2026

SMPTE Launches 110th Anniversary Campaign to Advance Its...

SMPTE, the global society for media professionals, technologists, and engineers, has announced the launch of the SMPTE 110th Anniversary Campaign, a fundraising...

15/07/2026

STUDIO TECHNOLOGIES UNVEILS MODEL 762 STEREO LEVEL CONTRO...

Studio Technologies, a leading manufacturer of high-quality audio, video, and fiber-optic solutions, unveils the new StudioComm Model 762 Stereo Level Control, ...

15/07/2026

COW Jobs: Producer, Virtual Events - Hybrid, Full Time, Salaried

COW Jobs: Producer, Virtual Events - Hybrid, Full Time, Salaried Brie Clayton July 15, 2026 0 Comments Producer, Virtual Events (Hybrid | Full-time | ...

15/07/2026

SIMBA powers new streaming delivery network with Broadpea...

Brazilian media organization builds nationwide CDN with Broadpeak's high-performance software for low-latency streaming and new content distribution service...

15/07/2026

DHD Introduces Discovery Utility for Network-Connected Au...

DHD announces a new utility designed to increase the efficiency of its audio mixing systems during initial installation and subsequent configuration. Anyone w...

15/07/2026

BCNEXXT Brings Next-Generation Vipe to IBC2026 Breaking t...

BCNEXXT Brings Next-Generation Vipe to IBC2026, Breaking the 1:1 Channel-to-Server Ratio New innovations liberate broadcasters from legacy playout infrastructur...

15/07/2026

S&P Analysis: Three Quarters of Americans Watch Live Sports

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/07/2026

Scripps Sports, Ion Score Women's Volleyball Rights

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

15/07/2026

NVIDIA Introduces New Jetson Thor Computers to Advance Mainstream Robotics and Edge AI

General-purpose robots and autonomous machines are moving from research labs to ...

15/07/2026

Screeners and press pack now available: Gomorrah: The Origins premieres on Sky and NOW on 28 July

Wednesday 15 July 2026 Screeners and press pack now available: Gomorrah: The Or...

15/07/2026

Audiences to get behind-the-scenes access to Trinity College Dublin's Old Library in new RT series

Trinity's Treasures features Ruth Negga, Eleanor McEvoy, and David Norris, a...

15/07/2026

Building Ireland explores the River Shannon region from Leitrim to Limerick in a new series

Join geographer Dr Susan Hegarty, Engineer Tim Joyce and Architect Orla Murphy a...