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RML Goes To The Pub

The latest Saturday Night chat show from Avalon Television and ITV came in the form of ‘Al Murray’s Happy Hour’, filmed at The London Studios between January and February 2007.

Lighting director Martin Kempton was enlisted to light the show, and he chose to hire most of the lighting rig from rental company Richard Martin Lighting. The lighting brief for Al Murray’s Happy Hour was to create a glitzy Saturday night entertainment programme but with the comfort and theme of your local public house and to complement the character Al Murray plays in his hit TV show and stage production ‘The Pub Landlord’.

The show consists of two parts: the first, Al Murray interacting with the audience with stand up comedy, the second, interviews with guests and music performed by live bands each week.

Martin Kempton commented: ““For the first section (stand up comedy) I lit the set in warm reds – embracing the audience into the whole environment so it felt as though they were all in Al’s pub. For the interviews I lit the set in deep blues but the central interview ‘snug’ was lit in warm reds so that it concentrated the viewer’s eye to the focus of the action.”

Chroma Panels were used in the chat area with 24 under the Perspex floor and another 20 were stacked behind the seating with glass bottles in front. The rest of the Panels are in the band area in stacks. The rest of the band area includes piles of beer crates on their sides and columns of beer kegs. The crates were black, and Chroma Strips emphasised the random holes in the crates, making the effect spectacular.

To highlight the band area Martin used VL3000 Spots for the beams, and VL2000 Washes to give narrow solid beams. “They snap between colours really well too so they are always a favourite of mine,” he said.

The band area also used VL1000TS for keys and MAC 500 backlights, and surrounding the band on the floor Martin used Mini Macs “I love these little lights, they look stylish on camera and punch well above their weight light-wise.”

The recurring theme of beer crates was used on the main set as well as in the band area, with VL2000 Washes providing shafts of light down the columns of the crates and Pixel Pars were used to shoot up the columns. The rest of the main set was lit with VL3000 Wash Lights with MAC 600’s filling in the gaps.

MAC 500’s were used for their gobo work to give the bottles on the set a slight ‘glint’. Martin also chose to use VL500’s for backlighting on the stand-up comedy section of the show.

Stage Zoom 1200’s were used to project a break up onto backlit Rosco panels on the set. “With any kind of moving light projector the intensity and beam angle are important but what is far more important to me is the pattern they are projecting.”

During ‘Al Murray’s Happy Hour’ audience participation was a huge part of the experience, and MAC 500’s and MAC 250’s were used to emphasise the 600-strong audience. MAC 500’s backlit the lower audience and MAC 250’s were used to wash over the upper audience. “It all helped to create almost a stadium look on some reverse shots,” said Martin Kempton.

“On the final week we had the cast of ‘We Will Rock You’ as a piéce de resistance and we then had a kabuki drop to reveal the real Queen. I needed something special to cut through all this so from RML I used a Nova Flower and some Moving High Grounds. It was all way over the top and exactly what we needed!”

Martin concluded: “As ever the RML gear was well maintained and reliable. They got full marks from me. Andy Dobbs on the Vector, was as ever cool, calm and always in control. He came up with some lovely stuff on the band numbers – in particular the Queen spectacular on the final week. I was hugely indebted to the techs, Magnus Flanagan, Dan Neagle, Lidz Milheiras and Bryn Williams.”

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RML Goes To The Pub

23rd April 2007

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