"Our brief was to transform the look of the building, bringing it to life" comments Jason Larcombe, lighting designer for White Light Events, "and at the same time to use lighting to support and enhance the drama of the show. Up until one week before the load-in, we were expecting over half the building to be covered in scaffolding as part of a campus redevelopment programme! Fortunately careful negotiation allowed us to win a two week delay to the scaffolding work so that we were able to show the building in all its splendour!"
Larcombe designed a lighting system based around three principal elements. StudioDue CityColor 2500W colour-changing floodlights were used to wash the building's 150m frontage. "The CityColors are superb at providing high volumes of light and crisp, saturated colours," notes Larcombe. "Martin MAC2000 spotlights - mounted in weatherproof domes - complemented the colour wash by allowing images and movement to be played across the building. Their zoom optics and effects made them a perfect choice, allowing us to highlight tiny architectural details or to open the units out and cover the whole facade with kinetic textures and patterns in an almost filmic way."
The final part of the design provided general frontlight to the performance area using 16 ETC Source Four 5° and 10° profiles positioned on the roof of the 10-story college building. With a tight load-in schedule that gave them access to the site for two days prior to the event, Larcome did as much work as possible beforehand. He recalls: "We used AutoCAD and WYSIWYG to prepare plans and visualisations, and install electrical systems ahead of time so that we could just turn up, plug in and go."
An Avolites Pearl console was used to give Larcombe the flexibility he needed in an event where the large number of volunteers involved meant that he never got to see all of the elements of the show until the day itself! Dave Woodman Audio provided the Sound system and fireworks came from Rocket Pyrotechnics, another of White Light Events' regular collaborators.
"Everyone was and is still thrilled," comments Martin Harvey of King's College. "It was a fantastic show. The building looked so wonderful - no one has ever looked at it as a serious piece of architecture until now!"
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
