MANCHESTER, U.K. – HSL (Blackburn, U.K.) provided lighting gear for Don't Scare The Hare, the first BBC TV show to be produced at the new Media City complex & studios in Salford Quays, Greater Manchester. The show, produced by Endemol, airs in April on BBC1. The LD for the project is Tom Kinane. HSL's Sean McGlone served as project manager. Lighting and color play key roles in the production. When the "hare" – a large animatronic object – gets frightened, the whole environment goes on red alert.
Kinane uses Vari*Lite moving lights, white lights, LED sources, cyc lighting and followspots to light Patrick Watson's "enchanted forest" set design, populated with 14 mushroom-esque trees constructed from white lycra fabric stretched over wire frames, which serve as a projection surface for lighting and gobos. A large white cyc also arcs along the back of the studio and two sides.
For moving lights, HSL supplied 16 Vari*Lite 3500s and 42 Vari*Lite VL3000s. which were positioned on overhead truss and on the floor, where they were concealed behind some of the set pieces.
Each of the trees was up-lit by five PixelPARs ensconced in the bases, and the trees themselves were also edge-lit with ribbon LED strips supplied by Manchester-based EC Creative.
The cyc was illuminated with a combination of 60 Iris 4s for the top half and 120 ground rows for the lower half, with another 40 ground rows used to illuminate individual set pieces.
"Having a white cyc has given me enormous scope," said Kinane. "I have really enjoyed having to approach lighting in a more traditional way, and it's a good contrast and completely different to working with an LED based set which is currently so often the norm."
The Vari*Lites were also used for gobo projections, including clouds, a moon and a sun, helping the set go from night to day with a 90-second crossfade.
Some of the games props, such as the clocks. also had internal LED lighting (in this case Pulsar ChromaStrip), an integral part of the game-playing process.
All the white light sources – 48 5K and 30 2K fresnels – and six Robert Juliat Ivanhoe followspots were set up around the gallery above the studio floor.
Along with the goal of creating bold, comic book style lighting looks to the production, Kinane needed to light the stage so it would also look good via HD cameras, which are more sensitive than standard resolution cameras when it comes to capturing lighting on faces.
Max Conwell used a Chamsys MagicQ console to control the moving lights, and James Ashdown handled the generics using the studio's ETC Congo.
Many of the lighting cues, especially those involving the props, were MIDI triggered via the Cat & Mouse game playing software so they synched with the game action.
Tom Kinane's team also included gaffer Richard Jarvis and lighting techs Dan Kinane and Chris Hyde. They all worked with BBC HQ1 studio manager Jim Ewart, scenic turnaround manager Rob Lawson and studio resources manager Jonathan Harley. Don't Scare The Hare's series managers are Tom Blakeson and Neil Gallery, and the unit manager is Louise Bengor.
For more information, please visit www.hslgroup.com.
