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WACKIT LIGHTING DESIGN CONTEST Lighting Designer, Durham Marenghi joins forces with CAST Group and Claypaky to create a virtual lighting competition – giving lighting professionals and scholars something to strive for during this uncertain time.
Last month, Claypaky and CAST Group of Companies announced the WACKIT virtual lighting design competition, a concept created by awardwinning Lighting Designer, Durham Marenghi and his partner, Jennie. “We were all sat in lockdown and coming towards November when we are usually working on Classical Spectacular in the Albert Hall,” reminisced Marenghi, discussing the origin of the competition. “At the same time, I was doing many design pitches for next year on WYSIWYG. With that in mind, we came up with the idea of giving those in the industry something to do during this hard time.” WACKIT comprises two side-by-side competitions for professional and student lighting designers in the UK and Ireland to create a virtual video
of their work from a model of the Prestigious Royal Albert Hall. CAST will support WACKIT with free WYSIWYG educational licences for the period of the competition for professional LDs and, in the case of students, a 12-month free design educational licence. For the competition, Marenghi contributed his own digital model of the Albert Hall with the Classical Spectacular rig, so that everyone entering the competition must use the same amount of equipment. “We’ve also picked four pieces of classical music that we know work, limiting it to four minutes, or they can choose a piece of contemporary music,” stated Marenghi. There are three amazing prizes to be won in both competitions for both the professional and student categories including first place winners being 36
