15.03.2018 | Elation Q7 PARs Weather the Cold on Miller Holiday Lites

Clearwing Productions of Milwaukee used Elation Professional’s Level Q7 IP™ RGBW Par lights on Miller Holiday Lites in Milwaukee for the entire month of December in cold weather with no issues then rolled them right into ‘big game’ festivities in Minneapolis in January, where they continued to perform in even colder weather.

Clearwing, who stock hundreds of the Level Q7 IP Par lights, provided all of the lighting, decor, video and audio equipment for Miller Holiday Lites in partnership with GMR Marketing, their second year decking the halls on State Street with GMR Marketing and Miller Brewery.

Miller Holiday Lites is a yearly family-friendly tradition in Milwaukee, where guests are invited to take a mini-tour down State Street, decorated with festive holiday lighting courtesy of Miller Brewing Company. Guests had the chance to view a 4-5 minute programmed light show before enjoying other Miller Brewery tour activities, such as experiencing the iconic caves and sampling a wide variety of Miller products.

Used for uplighting and wash lighting in several areas of the production, the Level Q7 IP fixtures, which house seven 15W RGBW LEDs for nearly unlimited color options, were the “workhorse” of the Holiday Lites display according to Mercer Pinkston, account executive at Clearwing. “Honestly, the most impressive feature of the Level Q7’s is the durability,” she said. “All of these fixtures sat outside in freezing temps, snow and heavy wind for well over a month. An interesting thing to note is that these exact fixtures went straight from our hot, humid, and rainy festival season to Miller Holiday Lites and then on to another show directly after that. They traversed several different climates and were exposed to a variety of elements throughout their first official year in our inventory and they are still performing as well as the day we unboxed them.”

Some 200 Level Q7 IP fixtures were used to light various areas down two city blocks of State Street. One of the biggest compliments that Clearwing and Lighting Designer Mitch Van Dyke received on this year’s design was for a special color wash effect in trees during the light show. Pinkston explains, “Some of the trees are very large and in hard-to-access locations so getting traditional string lights on them wasn't a possibility. Instead, we used Q7’s to uplight and front wash these trees. They really packed a punch by offering us the opportunity to have many color options and people loved it!” Level Q7 IP™ fixtures were also used to uplight a special Keg Tree, a crowd favorite according to Pinkston.

Miller Holiday Lites ran November 29th to December 30th and was again an important event in creating the holiday spirit in Milwaukee. “The event was excellent and so were the Q7 fixtures,” Pinkston concludes. “We never had issue with any of them, which is amazing considering we had 200 site wide.”

GMR Marketing: Bryce McMichael, Elliot Lund, Jill Woller
Lighting Design: Mitch Van Dyke
Decor Design: Sasha Scherlinsky
Video Content: Woody Davis
Photos: Jay Baumgardner