ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium Used on London New Years Fireworks Display

LONDON –  London saw in the New Year with a world-class spectacular firework display. Jack Morton Worldwide, the global brand experience agency, created the experience – an event which it has conceived and produced for fourteen consecutive years. Contributing to this year’s event was a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium console, which was used by lighting programmer Paul Cook to control the 18-universe lightshow that supported the fireworks display.

The display, which took place over the River Thames and the Coca-Cola London Eye, is a unique global showcase for the iconic city, reflecting its dynamism, creativity and openness.  The show was seen by millions of people on BBC One and live by over 100,000 people in viewing areas on the banks of the River Thames.

Synchronised and triggered by GPS to Big Ben’s Chimes, the 12-minute show lit up the River Thames with 2,000 lighting cues and 12,000 fireworks producing 50,000 projectiles. The FOH station with its MagicQ MQ500 Stadium desk and MagicQ MQ 80 backup was situated on the river bank directly opposite the Coca-Cola London Eye. From this position, the console controlled the 640 RGB panel lights permanently installed on the Coca Cola London Eye as well as 32 profile fixtures, 32 blinders, 30 LED hybrid units and 16 batten washes that were brought in for the spectacular New Year’s Eve event.  

“We were extremely happy with the MQ500 console,” said Cook, who worked the console with Durham Marenghi. “It operated superbly controlling lights in sync with the music to support the ln fireworks. The advanced power of the onboard processing was quite impressive, allowing us to output a large number of universes directly from the console without external processing nodes.

“The built-in visualiser system was also used to great effect to demo the show to the creative team from Jack Morton and their end client from the Greater London Authority,” continued Cook. “We found that during the build up to the show the response speed of the visualiser was about five times faster than those of competing systems. We used it as a real-world reference to double check the pre-programming. This was critical, since we only had about one-hour of real-time testing with the actual rig in advance of the show,”

Once again, this year, London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks earned universal praise. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “The spectacular London New Year’s Eve fireworks would not be possible without the incredible hard work of Jack Morton Worldwide. This year’s display was the best and most exciting yet – kick-starting 2018 in style. Thank you to all of those working tirelessly behind the scenes – showing, yet again, that London leads the world in major events.”

Jim Donald, Director of Production, Jack Morton Worldwide said: “The New Year’s Eve firework display has become synonymous with London and its people.  We’re incredibly proud to be part of creating such an iconic and globally recognised event.”