Ravinia Music Box

In the fall of 2016 long time client, BRC Imagination Arts asked Manny to join the team designing the new Music Box Experience Center at Ravinia Festival. Beginnings are always exciting and this project was no different. The Music Box project, led by Creative Directors Brad Shelton and Edward Hodge, contained elements of exterior building lighting, hospitality spaces, general circulation lighting that needed to connect to the pre-show experience and at the center of it all, a theatrical design for an immersive experience celebrating music and legacy of Leonard Bernstein. 

The jewel in the crown of the project is Bernstein’s Answer, a 10 minute immersive experience that asks the question of music’s impact and meaning. It explores the question by using music, projection, lighting and Bernstein’s own words & thoughts. Everything in the theater reacts to music and emotion. Manny explored ways in which the environmental and scenic lighting could lift and transform moments and the audience’s perception of the those moments. 

As the experience explores the topic of music’s power to transform and move people’s emotions, so too does the physical space of the theater itself transform. Projection and light both begin the show being very focused within the theater’s proscenium. As the show opens up with Bernstein’s music, so does the theatrical fabric of the show with projection and light expanding to surrounding the audience. It was a delight to design Bernstein’s Answer, a show that has such powerful music at its core, with all the team members at BRC. Lighting and music are two artistic expressions meant to dance with each other and on this project that dance helped build the emotional core of the show’s message. 

For the exterior of the building there is a bar space that sits on top of the lobby and pre-show spaces. Manny and BRC Creative Director Edward Hodge began by considering how the building would be seen from the lawn of the festival where so many of the guests experience the concerts from. The bar was always conceived as an island of color floating on top of the building. For the bar there were two major criteria. First, that the color all came from concealed sources. Manny wanted the impact to be from the color environment and not the point source of the light itself. The second major gesture was the ceiling of randomly laid out tiny aperture downlights that created the low level circulation lighting. Manny carefully considered both the location of each fixture but also their random circuiting combination to allow a carried intensity level from the point sources without a perceived pattern.

Rounding out the project was the gallery and circulation lighting. The BRC design concept for the whole building was centered around a design language of asymmetrical lines and shapes, and in the gallery and pre-show spaces Manny designed a track system that echoed that language.

The joy of the Music Box Experience Center for NYX was that is a complete project that encompasses the entire theater building, requiring many design skills and disciplines to come together to make for an impactful experience for the guests. It was a joy to be on this team.

Acura RDX

This year's auto show season for Acura was dedicated to the launch of the RDX and Manny was again asked to design the lighting for the press conferences.   First with the reveal of a concept in Detroit and then with the reveal of the production car in New York,   This year also marked the debut of a new design for the Acura booth.   It features a transparent LED Display creating a space between the screen and wall of the booth that is an ideal location for a car reveal.

Our client, Spinifex, made wonderful use of the layers this screen provided by using projection on the back wall and placing the reveal car in between the two layers of content.  Then as the reveal played out content pushed forward and backward through dimensional space with light playing out on the car in the space in between.

We lit the up stage car in layers as well.  Both from above as well as thin strip of animated light at the base of the car right up against the screen.    This allow us to tease out details of the car during the revel video.

In New York, we created a series of 8' tall pixel sticks that created the base of reveal.   Having this scenic element with pixel driven light allowed us to create an reveal that captured rhythm and mood of the reveal music and also focus on a visual representation of speed.  

Both reveals showed off the complexity that Spinifex likes to build into new car launches.  Both were a study of media and light playing out through multi planes of space.

Power Of Rock Experience

After over a year of design development The Power of Rock Experience opened to the public at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this past July.   Manny Treeson was invited to design the lighting for the whole experience, created, designed, and produced by BRC Imagination Arts.   We were thrilled to be on the team for such an exciting project.

From the beginning of the process, BRC's Creative Director Christian Lachel desired to take the guests on a journey immersing them in the music.  Christian knew everyone has memories and emotions triggered by one song or another.  From a lighting point of view, we wanted to have the whole experience be active and fluid; that all the lighting would be an extension of the music bathing the guest in an immersive environment driven by both beat and mood.   

The theater was created to embody all of these ideas.   We started with the film, directed by Jonathan Demme, that celebrated the legendary performances at the induction ceremony and concert.  

The film utilizes tracking screens with dynamic media locked to them.    Scenic lines made up of video strips outline the space.  We approached these video strips from a generative point of view.   The content is generated in Touch Designer  in real time and manipulated by the lighting console.  This afforded us the ability to treat this scenery dynamically and manipulate it along with the entire lighting rig.

Once the the film concludes, the guests walk out through a curved ramp that rises from the 3rd floor to the 4th around the outside of the theater.   To make this exit more dynamic we created a tunnel of volumetric video that was cued to While My Guitar Gently Weeps.   A rotating vortex of light and pattern pulls the guests  down the hallway.  We wanted the guests to feel that the entire space was directly connected to the music and that they were completely immersed within it.

Upon exiting the hallway, the guests are treated to an exhibit of artifacts from the performances that were featured in the film.  

Ford Rouge Factory Tour wins THEA Award for Outstanding Achievement

Manny was  thrilled when the folks at BRC Imagination Arts asked us to design the lighting for the  Manufacturing Innovation a 360 degree theater that is part of the Ford Rouge Factory Tour.  We were even more thrilled when we learned it won a THEA Award for Outstanding Achievement.   

The show was conceived to celebrate the launch of the new Ford 150 truck which is built at the Rouge Plant, Dearborn MI.   The audience experiences how the truck was designed and built through six screens that immerse the audience in a 360 degree experience.   The show uses projection mapping on the 150 to illustrate the journey the truck takes through the manufacturing process.   

We designed the lighting throughout the theater to wrap around the audience and immerse them in the experience of the show.   We lit the walls behind the screens as wrap around cyc and we embeded small puck lights in the floor in a grid.   We were then able to extend the canvas of the theater by using the floor and walls together in pixel map.   The effect is a fluid radiating wash of color across the theater in sync with the music and narrative beats of the show.   

A real highlight for us was conceiving the lighting for the manufacturing robots that are central to the show.   It seemed natural that instead of lighting the robots from above or below, the robots themselves should emit and glow with light.  This way no mater where in space their arms move they always are alive with light. 

NYX joins the team for Honda & Acura

This year Manny was invited by his client, Spinifix, to join the team for the Honda and Acura press conferences for the whole auto show season.  In each city NYX needs to support two shows in two different spaces so naturally Manny asked Brian to also join the team.   

While Manny serves as the designer for both brands up front on site for this year's The Los Angeles Auto Show, Brian was the designer for Honda and Manny was the designer for Acura.

For Honda this season, the design centers around a ever changing array of pixel mapped cubes.  For each city, the cubes are arranged in a different pattern and Manny creates a different pixel map for Spinifex and then they create the reveal video that stretches across not only the ultra wide screen video wall but also down onto the cubes as well. 

In Los Angeles, Honda revealed the New H-RV and the reveal video's creative was centered on a cubist/mindcraft look.  The lighting design continued the cubist theme with Magic Panels within the garage for the car that Brian cued to first appear as full cubes but as the reveal progressed those cubist patterns were deconstructed into smaller and smaller square patterns.

Acura debuted the new 2016 ILX and Spinifex wanted to work with volumetric light as design motive. The creative direction was to use light as architecture that could be reshaped through out the reveal.   In the auto show environment getting enough darkness to perceive this effect can be challenging so the team leaned heavily on sharpys who beams have enough energy to cut through the background noise of the auto show floor.

Detroit is up next and the team is hard at work getting ready.  Watch this space for the next update from the season.

Xbox E3 2014

It was all games, games, and more games as Phil Spencer from Xbox too the stage at this years E3 Media Briefing.   Manny was asked again by our client, Zed Ink to be the Lighting Designer for the Media Briefing which was broadcast live on Spike TV.   This was Manny's 9th year lighting the project.

A major feature of this year's show was a design that brought the show more out into the audience.   Three satellite stages with scenic LED backing screens were place out onto the main floor of the Galen Arena.    Using the whole floor of the arena brought the presenters and the game demos closer to the audience and created a more intimate look on camera.

This year's set featured an ultra aspect ratio screen with track masking elements to close it down when needed.  This created many technical challenges.  We chose to solve them by attached integral lighting to the scenic elements so their lighting quality traveled with them as they moved.    It also allowed the programming of the show to be agnostic from the position of the scenic walls.   If the creative team chose to change the placement of a tracking cue it did not requite a refocus on our part

Erin Hearne Williams, Zed's Creative Director for the show also wanted to immerse the audience more into the show and have that be reflected on the broadcast.  She added LED bracelets from Pixmob that could be controlled as part of our lighting system.  This opened up a whole new world of visual effect that turned the audience into surrounding backdrop for so many of the camera shots seen at home.   

Evening Showcase

This year both Manny and Brian also designed the Xbox Showcase.   The location is always an iconic downtown venue.  This year was no exception and the event took place at the recently renovated Ace Theater.   Its rich architecture, painted in the brand colors of Xbox become a photogenic backdrop for debut of game play from so many of the new titles coming out this year.