FEATURE | L IGHT I NG SPEC I AL
LIGHT SHOW NEW LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY WAS IN ABUNDANCE AT THE RECENT BSC EXPO, CONCENTRATING ON MATURING THE ALREADY ESTABLISHED FEATURES
WORDS PH I L RHODES / PICTURES VARIOUS
L ED lighting has been a mainstream force for about a decade. For most of that decade, it’s been clear what the direction of progress should be: more power, better colour quality and recently, finer control with radio links, smartphones and lighting desks. Some of those things are likely to remain a big deal for some time, but if there’s an overriding theme in 2020 it’s of maturity. It’s increasingly the finer and finer details of designs that encourage people to specify one light over another.
ARRI A good example of this is Arri’s Briklok system, which was stacked like a giant, glowing Tetris piece at the front of the company’s BSC Expo exhibit. A single unit is a foot-square LED panel at around 70W, which might seem to put it in the same class as – well – a lot of other LED panels. There are two unusual things: first, it’s waterproof, which is not something we find often (Velvet’s lighting products are among the few others); second, the trick
with Briklok is that a sturdy clamping mechanism allows the panels to be assembled into arrays. Apparently the intended default is four feet square, implying sixteen panels and a total power of just over a kilowatt. Given enough rigging, the sky’s the limit. Perhaps what’s most interesting is that Arri (actually Arri Rental, for Briklok is to be a rental-only device) seems to have designed Briklok as almost a contrast to Skypanel. The latching arrangements are one thing, but unlike the
IMAGES The new Panalux Sonara 4:4
30 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 2020
Powered by FlippingBook