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Hair Raising Experience for Bandit
Bandit Lites UK supplied lighting production for the high profile 2006 Alternative Hair Show, staged in the Grand Temple at Freemason’s Hall in London’s Covent Garden. Lighting designer Simon Tutchener produced a dramatic, colourful, highly theatrical show to match this year’s theme of ‘Regalia’.
The show – which raises funds for Leukaemia Research and is linked to the massive Alternative Hair trade exhibition at Excel – featured presentations from 18 international hair teams. Each was allowed up to five minutes and six performers onstage to wow and dazzle the audience with an amazing selection of weird, wonderful and wacky creations.
This year marks the first time that Bandit has supplied lighting for the event. Tutchener, on the other hand, has lit the event for the last six years. It was also the first time in recent years that the Alternative Hair show has moved out of the Royal Albert Hall into this atmospheric new venue.
Bandit was an obvious choice for Tutchener as the lighting supplier, continuing his ongoing and extremely positive relationship with them, which includes events like London Fashion Week, Blenheim Palace Music Festival and tours with Mark Knopfler, Vanessa Mae and other leading artists. Alt Hair – as it’s known – was project managed for Bandit UK by its newly appointed Chief Executive, Lester Cobrin.
“The support and the kit from Bandit is excellent,” says Tutchener “And that’s why I keep using them”. Lester Cobrin adds “It was a great pleasure to support Simon, the Alt Hair production team and Leukaemia Research on this event. I look forward to another successful show next year.”
The big aesthetic challenge at Alt Hair is to create 18 individual and very different lightshows from just one 20 minute rehearsal per team.
As Tutchener explains, whilst some teams supply him with a full set of information, desired effects and cue lists in advance for their show … the majority do it on the spur of the moment during the rehearsal … necessitating plenty of ‘on the fly’ programming and artistic improvisation! This all happens on showday, with the first performance kicking off at 5 p.m. followed by two others at 7 and 9 p.m., so time is exceptionally tight.
Tutchener and team were able to get into the Grand Temple – a large balconied room with a fabulous ornate ceiling – two days in advance. The first job was to fly four trusses in a box configuration but they were not actually to be joined at the corners. Two trusses measured 60ft and two were at 40ft, with the 12ft wide by 60ft long catwalk running down the middle of the room. The trussing was also extended into an anteroom at one end, forming the runway entrance.
Onto the overhead trusses were rigged 30 Martin Professional MAC 2kW Wash and Spot fixtures, along with 2kW Fresnels to provide key lighting for the cameras (the event is recorded for DVD). Eighty Par 64s were used to provide four conventional colour washes
Twenty ETC Source Fours (with a selection of 5 – 50 degree lenses) were attached to a scaffolding structure at the front-of-house position, used by Tutchener as front array illumination for the action taking place at the end of the catwalk, which featured a small semi-circular stage area.
There were 12 MAC 500s on the floor – some at the end, and some spaced out along the catwalk.
Bandit also supplied four Lycian 1200w followspots that were corrected from HMI to tungsten to match the conventional lighting. The moving lights were also sometimes tungsten corrected for the same reason.
The Jands Vista lighting desk was operated by Mark Jones who has worked on all Tutchener’s Alt Hair shows to date. Tutchener used many of his Fashion Week technical team members to work on this project. Alt Hair crew members included Ewan Cameron, Tom Crosbie, Mick Freer, Becky Hughes, rigger Brian Wilson and power and cable maestro Dicky Hinds. Crew chief, Mike Humeniuk kept everyone organised.
24th October 2006
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