Event Lighting Blog

Theatrical Lighting and Uplighting for your Wedding or Special Event

Jim Powers — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:01:43 +0000

We’ve all seen those ultimate wedding shows. You know the ones where the budget just makes you blink a couple of times. A common theme in most of those high-end weddings is the use of theatrical lighting to create a mood in the venue. Once only reserved for the “platinum wedding” crowd, Theatrical lighting can enhance any event for almost any budget.

Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

The right lighting will create the right atmosphere and when it’s done well, lighting can make everything, including your flowers, cake, and guests, look better. Lighting can transform a venue. You can take an old church hall or a dated banquet room and completely transform it into a very high-end looking room.

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, MA

Simple lighting solutions can be quite affordable. If you’re planning an evening reception, make sure to visit your site at least once when it’s dark outside. Look around the room and see where the fixed lighting is focused. Lights that illuminate the walls, windows, and ceiling can draw attention away from the center of the room. You want to keep everyone’s eyes on the tables, dance floor, and each other.

Cambridge Marriott, Boston, MA

You’ll also need to discuss how much electricity your lighting designer is going to need. Your band or DJ will have to have an isolated power source and won’t want to risk tripping a circuit breaker.Ask if the site has dimmers for their overhead lights, and if there’s any fluorescent lighting at all, keep it turned off! Also, make sure there won’t be any service doors kept open, which could flood the space with light and ruin the effect.

Easthampton Room at The Log Cabin, Holyoke, MA

In order to express your desires to your lighting professional, You’ll need to know a couple of terms which will help to let the designer know what you want.
A Pin Spot is a fixture that provides a focused beam of light to illuminate an object like a centerpiece or wedding cake.
A Color Wash is basically a blanket of colored light covering an entire area. This can be accomplished with Uplighting.
Uplighting is when there are fixtures placed on the floor shooting up on to the wall. Several different types of fixtures can be used to accomplish this effect. Your lighting professional will recommend the right fixture by taking into account power requirements and the type of color saturation desired.
Gobo projections can include the couple’s monogram or an abstract texture pattern to add interest to a plain wall or ceiling.

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Jim Powers is the CEO of CJC Event Lighting, a professional lighting and production company based in Massachusetts. Jim has over 25 years experience in the wedding industry, and has been heavily involved in Electrical Engineering, Music & Sound Production and Theatrical Lighting for much longer than he would like to admit and his age would suggest.
CJC Event Lighting specializes in Wedding and Event Lighting in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston, and all of New England. CJC Event Lighting transforms your event space using professional theatrical lighting equipment setup and operated by experienced theatrical lighting designers.

Contact Information:
Jim Powers jim@cjceventlighting.com
CJC Event Lighting www.cjceventlighting.com
(413) 737-7555 • (617) 252-8116 • (203) 971-8220

Tagged: Boston, Boston Wedding Lighting, CJC Event Lighting, Colormaker LED, Durocher Florist, Event Lighting, Event Rental Furniture, LED Fixtures, Pinspotting, platinum wedding, texture projection, uplights, Wedding Lighting

Winter Wonderland Wedding

Jim Powers — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:16:48 +0000

Blue and white were the colors we used to create a winter wonderland for this wedding. For the Ceremony at the church, we uplit the walls in blue and spotlighted birch trees with frost gelled white pars. For the Reception, we transformed the Southampton Room at the Log Cabin with blue uplights, and pinspots.

Church

Southampton Room at The Log Cabin

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Tagged: CJC Event Lighting, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, Log Cabin, platinum wedding, uplighting, uplights, Wedding Lighting

A Fall Wedding at the Boston Marriott Longwharf

Jim Powers — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:55:27 +0000

As an event planning professional with the Springfield Marriott organization, our bride knew just the right vendors to pick to put together an amazing wedding! We worked with the crews from Durocher Florist http://www.durocherflorist.com and Bunnell Photography http://www.bunnellphotography.com for this event and the results were just amazing! This wedding even had a cigar roller during cocktail hour, and a belly dancer!

The Boston Marriott Longwharf is a very “lighting friendly” venue. Plenty of airwall track and individually controlled power for our pinspot adaptors make lighting this room a pleasure! We used over 30 pinspots connected right to the powered track rails to highlight every guest table and food station! We were able to hang our ellipsoidal fixtures from the airwall track to produce the stunning wall textures around the room. We uplit with a dark amber and gelled our textures with a lighter amber to create the contrast.

Heather from Durocher Florist provided dramatic tall centerpieces, a seating card “tree”, and some creative, textural bouquets that were absolutely some of the best arrangements we have ever seen!

Kathy from Bunnell Photography did an amazing job capturing the images from this event!

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Tagged: Boston, Boston Marriott Longwharf, Boston Wedding Lighting, Bunnell Photography, CJC Event Lighting, Durocher Florist, Event Lighting, Pinspotting, platinum wedding, texture projection, uplights, Wedding Lighting

Mechanics Hall

Jim Powers — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:11:45 +0000

Mechanics Hall is a great venue in Worcester, MA. We used a bazillion conventional fixtures to properly light this wedding… ok, not a bazillion… around 75. We used Par36s, 38s, 56s and 64s to properly balance the room with the just the right amount of light. We needed to use a couple different flavors of amber gels to compensate for not only bulb wattage, but the different projection surfaces as well. We also used a few of our new 5W Amber LED fixtures and we were able to match the conventional generated amber perfectly.
The balcony makes a perfect place to mount pinspots to highlight every guest table.
More photos of this one are coming!

Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Tagged: Amber Uplighting, CJC Event Lighting, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, Mechanics Hall, platinum wedding, uplights, Wedding Lighting, Worcester

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers

Jim Powers — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:18:15 +0000

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers headlined the “Pipes In The Valley” festival at Riverfront Park in Hartford produced by our friends at The Olde Burnside Brewing Company.
We uplit the giant structure covering the stage, provided stage lighting and control and pumped some fog on stage for the Piper’s entrance.

: Not sure who took this shot, but it’s a great overall look at the festival!

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Tagged: CJC Event Lighting, Concert Lighting, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, Olde Burnside Brewing Company, Riverfront Park Hartford, The Red Hot Chilli Pipers

Cambridge Marriott Boston

Jim Powers — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:32:43 +0000

The Cambridge Marriott Boston is located right by the MIT Campus. (just driving through makes you feel smarter) We transformed 2 sections of the ballroom for this very stylish wedding. We washed 2 airwalls in a light amber texture, and uplit the opposing walls with a light pink to match the linens and chair sashes. As the night progressed the colors slowly faded into other complementing shades. During a few of the high energy dance sets, the walls came alive with color creating a high end club atmosphere thanks to our wireless lighting control system.

Pink uplighting with one texture wall

Tiffany Blue uplighting

Magenta uplighting with another textured airwall

Table Pinspoting and custom Gobo projection

Tagged: Boston, Boston Wedding Lighting, Cambridge Marriott Boson, Cambridge Marriott Boston, CJC Event Lighting, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, texture projection, uplights, Wedding Lighting

West Side Idol II

Jim Powers — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:30:51 +0000

Mike, and our new designer Andy, lit the West Springfield Middle School Auditorium on Friday night for the second annual West Side Idol Show. Under the direction of Dan Kane, 40 of West Side’s future vocalists performed after a week of intense vocal training and choreography. Thanks to Devin for running the Followspot.

Stage lighting and LED washes

Tagged: CJC Event Lighting, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, Stage Lighting, West Springfield

Avon Old Farms Hotel, Avon, CT

Jim Powers — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:17:51 +0000

The Towbridge ballroom at The Avon Old Farms Hotel in Avon, CT is just the place for a small intimate elegant wedding with an adjacent tent covered patio. We created an elegant atmosphere with our light Amber uplights individually dimmed via our proprietary IPod controlled dimmer system for conventional lighting fixtures. At this wedding, we worked with the DreamTeam, a great 11 piece horn band from NYC.

Overall Room

Table Shot

Pinspotted Cake with Uplights

Pinspotted Cake with Uplight

Covered Porch with Uplights

Tagged: Avon CT, Avon Old Farms, CJC Event Lighting, CT, Event Lighting, uplights, Wedding Lighting

Tent Wedding in Southwick, Massachusetts

Jim Powers — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:03:10 +0000

When I was first approached by Jason and Beth about lighting a tent for their Wedding in Southwick, Massachusetts, there were more then a few open items. Like color and the size of the tent for instance! But this wedding has raised the bar in our book for a successful back yard (yes, back yard!!) wedding. The tent was 120 feet by 40 feet and provided by Fantasy Tents of East Longmeadow. This was one of the largest tents we have worked in and the quality of the tent was amazing!
We washed the ceiling with a light Amber leaf texture and pinspotted the tables for contrast. We also hung a few 24″ white lanterns in the bar tent and on the deck of the home hosting the wedding.
We also had the pleasure of providing lighting for the band Maxxtone. This band rocked the reception and had the dance floor full until… well, whatever time we got out of there. Yes, folks we enjoyed ourselves at this wedding . The catering was provided by The North Elm Butcher Block of Westfield and the food was amazing!

Before

After

Monogram Gobo Projection with Ceiling Texture and Band/Dance Floor Lighting

Ceiling Texture and Pinspots

Lanterns in Bar Tent

Just a cool overall shot... Shoulda used a tripod!

Tagged: CJC, CJC Event Lighting, Event Lighting, Fantasy Tents, Maxxtone, North End Butch Block, Pinspotting, platinum wedding, Southwick, Tent ceiling texture, Tent Wedding, texture projection, Wedding Lighting

The Boston Harbor Hotel

Jim Powers — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:42:33 +0000

The Boston Harbor Hotel is a great place for a wedding! The view is spectacular and the service is second to none. The venue has some features that make lighting the room a fun project! There are accessible, but unnoticable lighting battens built in to the ceiling for Pinspots or lekos, and a dmx console built into the room! The 6 columns in the center of the room can be uplit with either our wireless units or our pars or short bars. The perimeter of the room looks great with our 1 meter LED bars for full, even coverage.

View from the Harbor

Overall Room with LED Bars on perimeter and LED wireless units on the columns

Pinspotted Cake

Pinspotted Head Table

Gobo Projection on Dance Floor

Tagged: Boston, Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston Wedding Lighting, CJC Event Lighting, Colormaker LED, Event Lighting, LED Fixtures, uplights, Wedding Lighting