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White Light Events Celebrate 175 Years of King's College London
White Light Events recently supplied a spectacular lighting design to King's College in central London, as part of a dramatic evening's entertainment telling the story of the College's history to mark its 175th Anniversary.
Inspired by son-et-lumiere-style presentations on other historic buildings in London, King's College aimed to create not just a light show but a theatrical performance and spectacle complete with marching bands, a re-enactment of the famous Duke of Wellington Duel, dramatic musical presentations and with a huge firework display as the evening's finale. This was all to take place in the college's historic quadrangle, hidden behind the modern, 1970's facade visible from the outside world and so rarely seen by the public.
"Our brief was to transform the look of the building, bringing it to life," said 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."
Fortunately, White Light Events were brought in early enough to ensure that they could negotiate a suitably impressive backdrop for the lighting. "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!" comments Jason Larcombe. "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 from The Moving Light Company were used to wash the building's entire 150m frontage. "The CityColors are superb at providing high volumes of light and crisp, saturated colours," notes Larcombe. Martin MAC2000 spotlights complemented the colour wash by allowing images and movement to be played across the building; the MACs were positioned on the opposite side of the site, mounted in weatherproof domes to protect them from the elements. “Their zoom optics and effects made them a perfect choice," recalls Larcombe, "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 sixteen ETC Source Four five- and ten-degree profiles positioned on the roof of the ten-story college building. "This was one of the most challenging front-of-house washes I've ever focused," Larcombe recalls, "since the lamps were some 200 metres away and the rain was pouring down - but they are great units and the result was absolutely perfect."
Getting all of this equipment in position required close co-ordination between the White Light Events production team and the staff at King's College, with this one of the largest events ever staged at the college. White Light Events oversaw the lighting system from start to finish, coordinating the supply of power with regular collaborator Energyst Rental Solutions (CAT), devising a new rigging systems to allow the Source Fours to be both safely mounted in position and protected from the elements as well as completing all of the required method statements and risk assessments. The White Light Events team also had to deal with a very tight load-in schedule that gave them access to the site only two days prior to the event.
"In order to make best use of that time we did as much work as possible beforehand," Larcombe recalls. "We used AutoCAD and WYSIWYG to prepare plans and visualisations, and installed electrical systems ahead of time so that we could just turn up, plug in and go."
"For the performance itself, we used an Avolites Pearl console to give us the flexibility we needed in an event where the sheer number of volunteers involved meant that we never actually got to see all of the elements of the show until the show itself! Fortunately the weather, which had been atrocious throughout the load-in, cleared just in time for the show: although all of our equipment was protected from the rain, the 500-plus audience of special guests, dignitaries, patrons and college staff were sitting uncovered!"
White Light Events' work with the lighting was supported by a sound system from Dave Woodman Audio, and by a spectacular volley of fireworks from Rocket Pyrotechnics, another of White Light Events' regular collaborators.
The end result of this careful planning was a hugely successful show, and a happy college. "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! Thank you, White Light Events."
photo credit: David Morrell
27th May 2004
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