Amid a backdrop of fetching sirens and renegade pirates, the nightly Sirens of TI® show at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is a "modern musical-meets-action-movie spectacular." Featuring music, dancing, swordplay, acrobatics, and even a full size ship sinking, the pyrotechnics and lighting effects play a major role and were originally designed by industry icons, Roy Bennett and Troy Eckerman, who created the visuals for Madonna’s 2006 Confessions tour among many other projects.
During a two-month production hiatus back in 2007, Brent Hageman, the Casino’s head of lighting and sound, was exploring alternative lighting options and decided to integrate Pulsar ChromaFlood 200 LED lights into the show’s traditional lighting configuration, purchased in Las Vegas from Mojave Systems’ Peter Chachere. With the desert’s weather a challenge, he was pleased with the reliability of the LED products.
“I’d been hearing about LEDs, and in talking with other vendors and researching different brands, we decided to go with 14 Pulsar ChromaFlood 200s,” says Hageman. “We’re using 6 for a partial stage wash and 8 for a cyc wash behind one of the ships in the show. For the most part, it’s a pretty conventional application, but we’re doing a lot of color changing and running a few effects through them during the show. These are actually brighter then what we had initially—the colors are truer, and they’re reliable. You don’t have the issues of having a moving part malfunction or shifting a fraction one way or another. Other lights we had been using were having issues, so as far as the maintenance aspect, we’re getting the same results with no issues.”
Since coming back after Christmas, Hageman says they’ve zero problems, especially in the face of temperamental weather patterns posed with an outdoor show. “That’s definitely the main advantage of the Pulsar LEDs. Whether it’s hot, cold, rainy, or the summer’s dry heat, there is no maintenance required—and in a show of this magnitude, operating 7 days a week, it’s nice to have part of your rig that you don’t have to worry about. A lot of companies say that their stuff is weatherproof, or IP65-rated, but sometimes there are issues where they will trip GFIs and get moist. But we can run these in the rain, no problem. It’s also nice not to have to put them into some kind of tent or other enclosure. We just let them do their job.”
Hageman also found an added bonus of using the Pulsar LEDs—the ChromaFloods offer low power consumption. He says, “We are running fewer amps of power and liking the fact that we are saving energy without compromising the integrity of the end result. We’re definitely exploring ways to implement more of them into the show this year.”