Commercial Lighting and the Winter Olympics

For the last four days I’ve done nothing but watch the Olympics. Day and night, the Olympics have dominated the television in my house. Get together’s have been canceled, dinners have been rearranged and my DVR has been cleaned out for the events that I miss. There is just something about the pageantry of it, and, more impressively for me, the entire massiveness of it. Just the commercial lighting that has to be utilized to light over a dozen venues for the fans is amazing. I know, I know, here are Olympic athletes giving there all for the chance at gold and I’m focusing on something as small as the “lighting”, but if you think about it its small stuff like this that has to be meticulously considered to put these games on.

Imagine that it’s your job to figure out how to light a venue at the Olympics. Sounds easy enough, but for anyone who has had to work on commercial lighting before (and I have, maybe that’s where this interest comes from) knows that there is a lot to consider when lighting something as important as an Olympic venue. Take, for example, the Richmond Olympic Oval, home of the Speed Skating events for the games. Whenever you’re dealing with ice you have to be careful with the lights you use. If it’s too bright or put at the wrong angle you could be dealing with massive glare off the ice. The trick is, though, you have to be able to light the venue for television while being considerate of the skaters. How do you do this? I don’t really know, I guess that’s why they are professionals and I’m just a blogger.

The Opening Ceremonies of the games was one of the most amazing lighting jobs I’ve ever seen. The director of the ceremonies (who has previously directed the Opening Ceremonies for the Sydney games in 2000) used over 70 projectors to create stunning visual moments that helped bring people an up-close look at Canadian Culture. One of the most striking moments were a pod of projected orca whales moving across the stadium floor. In all, by using the projection lighting, the director was able to make a lot out of a little. Very rarely were live props used, but instead by using the lighting projected onto white objects it looked as it the arena was covered in water or leaves or snow. It was definitely a sight to behold.