SAN DIEGO – Power was the name of the game as the San Diego Padres pounded the World Series-champion San Francisco Giants 10-2 on April 11 during their 2015 Home Opening Series.  But the 20 hits off the bats of Padres sluggers weren’t the only pyrotechnics on display at Petco Park that Saturday night; the 42,823 fans in the stands were treated to a post-game laser lightshow with some punchy effects provided by 12 Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures from CHAUVET Professional.

San Diego-based Pro Systems, which designed the lightshow, had recently added the Rogues to its inventory.  A compact hybrid spot/beam moving head with 13 colors and gobo and prism effects, the Rogue RH1 Hybrid boasts an impressively intense output for its size: 170,000 lux at 15 meters at a 2.5° beam angle.  Pro Systems had broken out the Rogues at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami several weeks earlier, but the company knew the Chauvet fixtures would be put to the test lighting up a venue the size of a major league ballpark.

“It was a real challenge to fill up a space as large as Petco Park,” said Brad Donaldson of Pro Systems.  “We were contacted by the Padres a year ago about putting together a show of this type, but it just never came together.  So they reached out to us again this year because they wanted a laser lightshow as part of their Opening Week festivities.”

The challenge of illuminating such an immense space was compounded by the need to position fixtures in spots where they wouldn’t obstruct the sight line of fans.  Pro Systems ultimately decided to set up rigs containing lasers and moving lights at seven carefully chosen locations around the stadium’s perimeter. From these seven vantage points, the company was able achieve coverage of the entire field, and Donaldson credits the Rogues with playing a major role in this accomplishment.

“We used the Rogues in Beam Mode and we were definitely impressed with their output,” he said. “We also used some of their gobo and prism effects on the field, and it was quite remarkable how they cut through everything and looked so bright and good, especially in such a big space.”

The 18-minute lightshow featured a soundtrack developed by Pro Systems, along  with some San Diego-themed video clips which were intermingled with the lighting effects to “provide breaks for us to reset (the lights) and build up again,” said Donaldson.  He added that the show went off extremely well, both with fans and the team’s management: “Looking around during the show you could tell people were having a good time.  The Padres themselves said they got a lot of positive feedback from fans.  In fact they said people liked it so much, they wanted to get another date on the calendar this year to do it again.”