Painting with Light (PWL)’s creative director Luc Peumans was asked to design an eye-catching lighting scheme for the opening ceremony (OC) of the first Qatar eSports WEGA Global Games. The OC event was staged in the Khalifa Stadium in Doha and enthusiastically attended and appreciated by 14,000 eSports fans.
Show artistic director Steven Martin from The Cintamani Stone: ArchitectofEMOTION (TCS-AOE) asked Luc onboard for their pitch, and they were awarded the project by Doha-based event company The Planners LLC.
Working together for several years now, the experienced team at The Planners combined with TCS and Trimex has become a major player in the Qatar market for these types of shows and events.
Luc was excited to be part of an all-Belgium technical design and imagineering team including OC technical director Ludo Vanstreels from Trimex with whom PWL has also worked on several previous projects. A super quick turnaround was needed to get from conception to delivery in just 4 weeks!
Challenges for Luc’s lighting design included the positioning of the stage in one section down the long end of the stadium, which meant that the whole lighting rig – and all other technical elements – had to be ground supported.
An already incredibly tight timescale for creating and producing a complex event was also shortened when the date was brought forward by one day!
Integral to the winning pitch were elaborate projections mapped onto the stage floor and holographic images beamed on a special 30-metre-wide by 12-metre-high scrim – currently a trending aesthetic in the world of eSport tournament OCs. These had to be carefully ‘lit around’, combined with several flying and ground-based cast members and performers.
