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Mike Grabowski enhances backdrop for Times Square NYE broadcast with Chauvet's Colorado Solo Battens

Millions of viewers welcomed 2019 by watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.  They saw stars like Christina Aguilera, Bastille and New Kids On The Block welcome in the New Year on the Midnight Countdown Stage, a small open structure perched over the one million celebrants who crowded Times Square. They also watched in anticipation, as they do every year, as the giant ball dropped from atop One Times Square at midnight.

What these viewers didn’t see very much of, though, were the fire egress routes located throughout Times Square. Put in place by NYPD, these passages are essential security measures, but their empty space and utilitarian guard rails don’t make for compelling television. In the past, their presence limited the number of wide camera shots taken from the Midnight Countdown Stage, but as 2018 turned to 2019, the Lighting Design Group came up with a way to block the lanes from view with the help of 12 Chauvet Professional Colorado Solo Batten fixtures, supplied by WorldStage.

“Most viewers at home don’t realize there are so many egress lanes all over Times Square,” says the Lighting Design Group’s Mike Grabowski. “The show had to be very careful about going to wide shots, since all you would see were railings and empty egress streets.  This presented a challenge, because the wide shots could provide a very helpful change of scenery in a show that goes from 8 pm until after midnight.”

Being smaller than conventional strip lights, the Colorado Solo Batten fixtures fit on the Midnight Countdown Stage’s railings.  This allowed Grabowski to create “a dynamic lighting element that fit the aesthetics of the broadcast while blocking out the view of the egress lanes with their light.”

Being part outdoors and part indoors, the Midnight Countdown Stage creates challenges dealing with the elements, which is something that made Grabowski appreciate the IP65 rating of the RGBAW batten.

On this project, Mike Grabowski worked closely with Wolfram Ott and Jeremy Dominik, associate designers; Ron LaValle, Inside IATSE Head; Joseph Cartagena, Outside IATSE Head; Ryan Phillips, Outside Programmer; Steve Garner, Inside Programmer; and David Cook, Lighting PM.

(Photos: Jeff Neira/ABC via Getty Images)

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