The controversy once again marked an intense Premier League clash, as Arsenal secured a 2-1 victory over Chelsea. Jurriën Timber’s decisive goal reignited the debate: should it have been ruled out due to a possible foul in the build-up?
Fans will continue to debate it for a long time —and likely enjoy doing so—. However, there is one thing everyone at Emirates Stadium agreed on: the pre-match light show, designed by Ed Warren using the ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M Stadium console, delivered two minutes of striking visual impact.
Warren set ambitious goals for the show, which he had previously visualized using Capture software.
As the music built in intensity, the goal was to create a multidimensional show that transformed the space: washing the audience in color without dazzling them, creating a grid of lines across the pitch —something never done before in the stadium—, projecting powerful beams of light into the sky, and making the inner roof act as a strobe effect, he explained.
Working with a kit supplied by Zeal, Warren successfully delivered all of this without issues. “The entire club team was very supportive from day one, which made it much easier to carry out a project of this scale”, he noted. “Woody, Steve and John at Zeal, along with their team —Holly, Mitch, John, Caleb and Lewis— were key, as were Tim East, James Kirkup, Mikel Arteta, Gabriel Heinze and Kai Havertz, who also supported the project from Arsenal”.
While Warren made use of many capabilities of his ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M Stadium console —including its high capacity, various playback modes, and encoders—, a key aspect of this project was the ability to program wirelessly via the app.
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“The freedom it offers is key”, he explained when recalling the pre-match show. “I could move around the pitch with an iPad connected to the MQ250M, adjusting the perimeter lights to align them precisely. Before arriving on site, I had already prepared all the visualizations in Capture, controlled from the MQ250M: I programmed everything there and then connected ChamSys to import the patch directly. Then, when I received the MVR file from the supplier, I repeated the process, this time with the real positions and orientations of the fixtures”, Warren added. “On a project like this, having that level of flexibility makes a huge difference”.
