Color Kinetics LED Lighting Stars in Deck the Halls
Posted on November 21, 2006
Color Kinetics' LED technology is the technology star of Deck the Halls, a movie which stars Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick battling over the best Christmas lights display. LED lights were starting to really grow in popularity last year and the trend is certain to continue for the 2006 holiday.
Jason McKinnon of Electric Aura Lighting Design, who conceptualized the lighting display with Rob Sondergaard, says in a press statement, "This is a film that literally hinges on the lighting -- where the lights are a central character. Anything less than spectacular would have failed the story. Based on their highly programmable and durable nature, we knew that LEDs were the only feasible choice to make our concept a reality. Color Kinetics' technology exceeded our expectations, allowing us to turn the house into a three-dimensional video display that is the movie's climatic centerpiece."
Here's the film's trailer:
A press release from Color Kinetics provided some interesting details about how much lighting was used on the set and how much power was needed.
- The 14,300 LED nodes drew just 7,150 watts of energy (the equivalent of four average hairdryers) at full intensity.
- By comparison, wrapping the house in the same fashion with conventional exterior string lights would have drawn approximately 100,100 watts and would not have had the programmable effects.
- The electrical current draw of the entire LED installation was 126 amps (the approximate draw of 1.3 average households).
- The same configuration using conventional exterior string lights would have drawn 812 amps.
- Each tri-color node of iColor Flex SL incorporates a microchip that was custom-designed by Color Kinetics, making it an individually programmable "pixel."
- Filming was interrupted numerous times by small aircraft that were attracted to the set by the lights.
There are number of reasons for not using excessive holiday lighting, the most obvious of which is that it's tacky. The other good reason to avoid ostentatious lighting displays is that it could attract small aircraft and turn your street into a landing strip. This is not going to thrill your neighbors.