latest news headlines
HSL Dancing On Ice
HSL supplied all production lighting and rigging for ITV’s phenomenally popular Dancing On Ice show, which proved a runaway success and yielded record ratings.
Lighting was designed by Tom Kinane and Svend Pedersen working closely with scenic designer Marcus Blee. The stunning results of this prolific creative collaboration have been instrumental in the show’s success.
The series was recorded at Elstree Studios’ George Lucas Stage. Lighting wise, it involved over 80 moving lights, 700 LED fixtures – all fed from a PixelMAD server – and 120 30ft lengths of special festoon, plus 117 points of rigging and 300 metres of trussing. All this was co-ordinated by HSL’s Sean McGlone (lighting) and Rupert Reynolds (rigging).
McGlone comments: “It was great to be working alongside creative talent of the calibre of Tom and Svend, and on a show that was such a runaway success and where the visuals played such a vital role.”
The scenic design is based on a series of large 3D crystal set pieces (109 in total) overhanging the ice rink, made from Twin Wall plastic material. Once appointed for the project, Kinane and Pedersen spent months researching how this would react in situ refracting and reflecting different types of lighting, before coming up with their design that’s heavily based on the dynamics of LED elements.
Pedersen specified all the moving lights. These included 30 Robe ColorWash 1200 ATs, with special colour mixing palettes for television – used for highlighting the audience seating banks and flooding the rink with colours; 28 VL3000s used for gobo projection and beam effects onto the ice, and 20 MAC 500s around the perimeter of the rink, used for low level airborne effects and striping the ice with colour.
It was the first time Pedersen has used Robe fixtures which he says he’s found “phenomenally reliable and well engineered”. Vari*Lites are a regular favourite of his as are MAC 500s.
The large LED fixture count began with a selection of Pulsar Chroma Strips - up to four 300/600mm lengths per each individual crystal - and designed to provide perceptible movement as well as colouring inside the crystal block. These were controlled via 40 ChromaZones.
There was a total of 80 JTE PixelLine 1044s – in a variety of locations – underneath the floor of the ‘kiss or cry’ area, lighting the mirrored surface of the judge’s area, and highlighting the outline of the overhead trusses and header pieces, front lighting the crystals. Over 60 PixelPARs abounded – also in the judges area, lining the stairway to the rear of this and uplighting sections of the set.
The edge of the rink was illuminated all the way round with an unbroken single or double line of ChromaStrips.
Pedersen ran all the moving lights and LED sources – totalling 18 universes of DMX -via his WholeHog II console - with three overdrive units. This also triggered the PixelMAD system and a Catalyst digital media server feeding six of the new Barco R12 Plus projectors. These were supplied to the show by XL Video and are specially designed for vertical flying.
It was the first time that ice has been used as a major projection surface for a TV show. Visual artist Chris Plant was brought onboard by Pedersen to produce custom content and graphics for the projection and the LED sources. Plant is renowned for his organic, analogue techniques in producing beautiful imagery, based on the original psychedelic methods of the 1960s.
In addition to the special festoon which HSL made up with clear 35 Watt bubbles, they also supplied 60 pieces of 30ft egg strobe festoon, attached to the far outer truss that circumnavigated the studio’s periphery and three Studio Due Space Flowers for accents and opening stings.
Then there were generic and key lighting sources consisting of 40 Source Four Zooms and 20 fixed lanterns, and 22 5k Fresnels hung on the outer truss, effectively acting like house lights. There were also six truss-mounted followspots plus all dimming, power switching, distribution and motor control. HSL bought seven new Outboard Electronics 12-way motor controllers for Dancing On Ice and now offer this as their standard device.
It was the first time that Kinane had worked on an all-HSL supplied rig, and he said: “HSL have been absolutely brilliant and I can’t sing their praises enough. They did me a blinding deal on the kit so I could squeeze every inch out of an expedient budget. The service has been amazing and without them, this show would never have happened!”
Pederson weighed in with an enthusiastic “I can’t say enough good things about HSL – They are brilliant!”
14th March 2006
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
