Stadium of Fire is an annual celebration of patriotism held at Brigham Young University’s LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah each 4 July. This year, it featured a performance by the 300-member, Las Vegas-based Zion’s Youth Symphony & Chorus, a flyover by F-35 jets, skydivers, rousing tributes to military and civilian heroes as well as a headline set from pop sensations the Jonas Brothers. Lighting for this epic event was supplied by PSI (Production Services International), which utilised a rig comprised predominantly of ADJ Hydro Series IP65-rated automated luminaires as well as static IP65-rated washes to illuminate both the stage and entire stadium bowl.
The signature event of America’s Freedom Festival at Provo – a private, non-profit, non-political foundation whose mission is to celebrate, teach, honour, and strengthen the traditional American values of God, family, freedom, and country – Stadium of Fire has taken place annually since 1980. As well as attracting a capacity crowd in the stadium itself, the event is also televised worldwide to US troops and their families on American Forces TV.
PSI has been responsible for delivering the technical production for Stadium of Fire for the past 15 years, and in 2024 supplied the lighting, stage, rigging, and audio. To stage the event, which was far from a traditional concert production, the company’s team constructed a ground-supported 40ft by 40ft roof structure at one end of the stadium. This was flanked by truss wings for supporting video walls and surrounded by staging, which in total measured 104ft wide by 56ft deep.
An area of VIP seating was then set up in front of the stage on the first half of the field, while the rear half of the field was reserved for dancers as well as to serve as a landing zone for the parachute performers. PSI built three truss towers on each side of the field for rigging fixtures to provide illumination both for the crowd areas and the performance space on the field. Well over 100 ADJ luminaires, as well as additional fixtures from sister company Elation Professional, were deployed across the stage and field towers.
“We have owned ADJ fixtures for around seven years,” explained Austin Hart, Production Coordinator at PSI. “However, more recently, in the past three to four years, we have significantly increased our inventory. The reason for this is that we’ve been extremely impressed by the Hydro Series as well as ADJ’s other IP65-rated fixtures. We do a lot of county and state fairs – where the weather is often not that great – so that peace of mind of being able to leave lights out there in the open knowing that they’re going to be ok takes a lot of stress off everyone. ADJ lighting is also starting to become way more rider friendly. Increasingly, we are seeing LDs impressed by what the fixtures can do, and this has led to far more acceptance of the ADJ brand in the professional touring world.”
For Stadium of Fire 2024, PSI utilised 30 Hydro Wash X19 automated LED wash fixtures on the stage rig, spread equally over three trusses hanging upstage. Each of these trusses was staggered, both in terms of trim height and distance from the rear of the stage, to produce an angled wall of light. In addition, 12 more units were spread equally across the field truss towers.
The Hydro Wash X19 is a powerful and flexible fixture which features 19 independently controllable Osram 40W RGBW colour mixing LEDs and a motorised zoom function offering a variable beam angle of between 6 and 40-degrees. “It is a very versatile fixture,” comments Austin, “it can do everything from a narrow beam up to a very wide wash. At Stadium of Fire we used them to back wash the stage and also to hit the front section of crowd as well as to add movement and colour on the field.”
Twelve Hydro Spot 2 fixtures lined the downstage edge of the front truss. Powered by a potent 320W LED engine, this moving head spot delivers an impressive output of 15,000 lumens. It was utilised at Stadium of Fire 2024 for projecting GOBOS onto the stage and across the stadium as well as generating aerial effects above the crowd. “I’ve heard the best things about the Hydro Spot 2 of all the lights ADJ makes; LDs love it!” enthused Austin. “It has a powerful LED engine and a great collection of beam-shaping tools – nice zoom range, good CMY colour mixing, two GOBO wheels and two prisms – and, of course, it is IP65-rated, it really is a great fixture.”
The flagship of the Hydro Series, the Hydro Profile, was also utilised for the production, with six of the fixtures positioned on the downstage edge of each side wing. Harnessing the power of a huge 660-Watt LED engine, this luminaire delivers 25,000+ lumens of output and offers a truly expansive feature set. “The Hydro Profile really is super bright,” says Austin. “It has every feature an LD could wish for, including framing shutters, great colour mixing, a good collection of GOBOs and prisms, and a nicely defined beam. That’s why we had them on the edge of the stage, to shoot beams up and out over the crowd. They looked really cool, especially when they cut through the smoke from the fireworks.”
Combining 32, 12W six-in-one colour mixing LEDs, divided into eight separate zones, the HEX Panel IP is a vibrant wash fixture. 24 of the units were deployed as part of the stage rig, attached to the top edge of the upstage trusses above each Hydro Wash X19. These were utilised to enhance the stage wash and also create eye candy effects. In addition, four fixtures were rigged to each field tower, with two pointing in to illuminate performers on the field and two shooting out to light the crowds in the bleachers. “The 32 HEX Panel IP is a really useful fixture that is compact and robust,” commented Austin. “It gives a very bright, wide wash, and is therefore ideal for throwing up and covering a nice wide area, which is why we used them out on the field for this event.”
Completing the inventory of ADJ luminaires deployed for Stadium of Fire 2024 were 12 Jolt Panel FX multifunctional LED fixtures which lined the top edge of the downstage truss. Featuring a central strip of 48, 5W cool white SMD LEDs (divided into six zones), surrounded on both sides by a total of 800, 0.3W RGB SMD LEDs (divided into 40 zones), this fixture can be used to generate strikingly bright white strobe/blinder effects, vibrant colour washes and animated chase patterns. “The Jolt Panel FX IP is amazingly light and super bright,” stated Austin. “It is great for crowd eye candy; we used them to create some really nice pixel-mapped red, white and blue chase patterns.”
A signature event for PSI for over a decade, Stadium of Fire involves extensive planning and coordination with the organisers as well as the performers and other vendors involved in delivering the show. It is a lot of work for Austin and the entire PSI team, but a big payoff when they get to see everything come together. The significant quantity of ADJ fixtures used to deliver this year’s event reflects the extensive investment the company has made in ADJ over recent years, which was driven both by the quality of the product as well as the quality of the company’s after sales support.
“Service from ADJ is great,” enthused Austin. “We previously had video walls from another supplier and the service on those really sucked. If anything went wrong, we’d have to answer a bunch of questions and pretty much diagnose the problem ourselves before they’d even entertain taking a panel back to be fixed. Since we’ve moved to ADJ panels we’ve had a great relationship with the service department, and when we have an issue – which is rare – it gets dealt with quickly and very easily from our end. And we’ve also had that same high level of support for ADJ lighting. We’ve found ADJ’s fixtures to be very reliable, but when we do have an issue – which is always going to happen from time to time when you have a big stock of fixtures – they come back to us fixed very quickly.”
