Ayrton Diablos Shine for “NFL Honors” Broadcast
When the “9th Annual NFL Honors” was held the day before Super Bowl LIV, Lighting Designer Jon Kusner selected a complement of Ayrton Diablo LED profile luminaires from PRG to supplement the house lights. ACT Lighting, Inc. is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton fixtures in North America.
The awards presentation by the National Football League honored players from the 2019 season. It was hosted by Steve Harvey and pre-recorded for same day broadcast on FOX. The venue for the show was the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.
The Diablos were the first Ayrton fixtures used by Kusner, a member of 22 Degrees, a lighting design co-op in Los Angeles. He mounted 14 on the balcony rail to backlight the audience and act as a stage wash when crowds filled the set and follow spot traffic was compromised.
“The balcony rail typically holds conventional fixtures,” he notes. “The lights we chose had to have a smaller footprint; they couldn’t be over-scale and become an eyesore in the rest of the space.”
Diablo proved to be a perfect fit. “They were the only smaller-scaled instrument with framing shutters to control layering for consistent coverage and to control spill,” Kusner explains. “The Diablos also have an even field and consistent color temperature.”
The lighting designer was “pleasantly surprised by the intensity of the Diablos based on their scale. Often, smaller lights lose performance but that’s not the case with Diablo. They fit a niche as small, bright, shuttered lights – the perfect tool when you need that combination of features.”