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Safety first at Royal Albert Hall with ETC
Technicians at the Royal Albert Hall will no longer have to don safety harness and be hoisted 90ft into the air to focus luminaires, thanks to the safe thinking of senior technical manager Luke Manning, who has replaced conventionals with moving lights, including ETC Source Four Revolutions.
Luke explains: “The principal reason we’ve upgraded all our generic heads to intelligent units is for health and safety reasons. The whole industry has a duty to improve working conditions and to reduce the risk of accidents wherever possible.” The reason for the choice of Revolutions, he says, is because of their tungsten lamp: “Finding an intelligent wash light isn’t too difficult, there are plenty of those around, but orchestras that come in here demand tungsten for its colour.”
ETC's luminaires product manager Tom Littrell adds: “The Source Four is the most efficient tungsten luminaire for entertainment, given its high performance lamp and a dichroic ellipsoidal reflector which pushes more light out of the front and heat out of the back. This means a 750w Source Four is as bright as a 1200w unit with condenser optics from competitors.”
The Royal Albert Hall, says Luke, “hosts over 360 shows a year, from classical music to rock and pop concerts, jazz and world music to tennis and opera and ballet to corporate dinners, circus and film premieres. The Hall is very versatile, and can have a show loading out one day, and loading in for the next show the following day. So technicians would be in the rig refocusing lights at 2am – never a good time to have to concentrate at heights.
“Some of the promoters that have been in since we’ve changed to the new equipment have noticed the new look. While we’ve not told them specifically what the changes are, they’ve noticed and appreciated that we’re able to deliver better lighting in a shorter time frame.”
In total the Hall uses 100 intelligent luminaires, with focusing now carried out in minutes instead of hours.
For more information on ETC and its products, please visit www.etcconnect.com
In picture: ETC Source Four Revolutions at the Royal Albert Hall are helping to remove the need for working at height.
8th February 2008
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