Movie Park, the film-themed amusement park in Bottrop Germany, recently refitted its Studio 7 theatre venue using ADJ LED-powered entertainment lighting fixtures. The large and versatile space, used for seasonal productions throughout the year, is now equipped with an equally versatile lighting rig. Encore Profile Pro Color ellipsodials provide an even stage wash with full colour mixing, while Focus Profile moving heads positioned both above and in front of the stage can be utilized as spots, specials and for aerial beam effects.
Located 30 miles north of Düsseldorf, the theme park today known as Movie Park Germany was originally opened in 1967 and has operated under a number of different names during the intervening decades. It was significantly redeveloped as Warner Bros. Movie World Germany in 1996 and began operating under its current name in 2005, following a change in ownership. Its current slogan is ‘Hollywood in Germany’ and the park features a variety of rollercoasters, rides and attractions themed around popular movie and TV franchises. The park also features a variety of shows and live entertainment spaces, including Studio 7, a modern multi-purpose theatre which is used to host various productions each year.
Studio 7 previously featured a conventional lighting rig comprised of over two hundred 1000W PAR cans alongside numerous 1000W profile spots. Earlier this year it was decided to renovate the theatre’s lighting system with the goal of increasing energy efficiency and flexibility, while simultaneously providing more creative potential for the Lighting Designers who work on the productions staged in the space. Movie Park’s Christian Pieper and Walter Weijten share responsibility for managing the technical infrastructure of the park’s entertainment buildings. They engaged in extensive research, evaluating a wide variety of potential fixtures choices, before settling on ADJ’s Focus Profile automated luminaire and Encore Profile Pro Color ellipsoidal fixture to form the backbone of the new lighting rig.
The new lighting system was installed in May 2022 and was quickly put to use for the theatre’s family summer show, Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Mystery. This production, which ran throughout July and August, starred internationally renowned illusionist and escape artist Christian Farla and utilized the new lighting fixtures extensively, both to illuminate the performers on stage and to create dramatic effects throughout the theatre. More recently, the theatre hosted a Halloween production, Madhouse – Insanity Lives Here, which featured a lighting design by Olivier Rijnsaard that majored on dark moody looks and subtle aerial textures.
“We used the Encore Profile Pro Color fixtures primarily as front lights, but also utilized two as specials; one to illuminate the logo above the stage and another, positioned at the back of the stage entrance, to blind the audience,” explained Rijnsaard. “Using these LED-powered fixtures was great as they are super responsive with their dimming curves. Also, the colour mixing is really good and the output is consistent no matter which colour you select.”
“We chose the Encore Profile Pro Color for its 250-Watt RGBWAL LED engine and flicker free operation for TV and Film,” added Pieper. “Another consideration was its extremely quiet fan and its dimmer mode, which is perfect for our studio. Since installing the fixtures, we have been very impressed, we love absolutely everything about them!”
The Encore Profile Pro Color is a robust and reliable ellipsoidal fixture which features a 4-blade manual framing shutter system, manual focus, and a B-size GOBO slot. It can be used with ADJ’s range of interchangeable lens tubes, however it has an industry-standard design and can therefore also be used with any existing ellipsoidal lenses and accessories that a theatre, venue or production company may already own. It’s 6-in-1 colour mixing LED engine offers a high CRI (>90) and through independent dimming control of the red, green, blue, white, amber and lime LED elements, can be used to generate a huge gamut of colours ranging from vibrant primaries to subtle hues as well as colour-corrected white light with a range of colour temperatures. Movie Park invested in a total of 24 of these units for Studio 7, which allow an even wash to be achieved across the entire stage.
Flexibility is then added to the rig by ADJ’s Focus Profile, which is a feature-packed automated profile luminaire powered by a potent 400W LED light engine that generates an impressive output of 20,000 Lumens. It offers a versatile array of creative features, including four rotating framing shutters with shape rotation, an animation wheel, motorized zoom (beam angle 7 ~ 45-degrees), motorized iris, motorized focus, CMY colour mixing and variable CTO colour temperature control, an additional colour wheel loaded with six dichroic filters, two separate GOBO wheels (one with interchangeable indexed-rotating GOBOs and the other with static metal-stamped GOBOs), a replaceable (medium) frost filter and two independent indexed rotating prisms: 3-facet circular and 6-facet linear.
“The ADJ Focus Profile is a fully-packed moving head that gives us a solution for all our shows and events,” enthused Pieper. “Instead of saying what we like about it, it’s easier to say what we don’t like, because there is nothing at all! We were particularly attracted by the incredibly bright LED engine as well as the rotating full blackout shutter, which is amazing. We also love the CMY colour mixing with variable CTO and, of course, the attractive price was also an important factor in helping us make the decision to commit our budget.”
“It is a super-fast spotlight in every way,” added Rijnsaard, “its movements, its GOBO switches, and also its blade package. I also find the CMY flags very good in output efficiency, for example red – mixed through the CMY flags – still comes through very well. I also like the fact that the zoom range is very wide, it’s a very versatile fixture. For the Madhouse production we wanted to keep the stage dark to build a sense of fear. I was able to use the Focus Profiles for narrow spots on stage and the CMY mixing allowed me to keep the look dark but with colours that still appeared vibrant.”
With two successful productions and hundreds of performances now completed, Studio 7’s new ADJ-powered lighting rig has proved to be extremely reliable. It has also achieved both of Pieper and Weijten’s primary goals for the technical renovation project, providing a system that is completely flexible and far more economical to run compared with the previous conventional rig. Planning is now well under way for Movie Park’s 2023 season. And, while the full details are still currently being kept confidential, it is set to include exciting new productions in Studio 7 that will again fully utilize the versatility provided by ADJ’s LED-powered, full-colour mixing Focus Profile and Encore Profile Pro Color luminaires.
