More details from Entec Sound & Light (http://www.entec-soundandlight.com):
Entec Laughs For the Polar Bear
LONDON, UK – Entec Sound & Light supplied lighting, sound and video production and crew for the recent Friends of the Earth’s star studded comedy sold-out extravaganza at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo, “Laugh or the Polar Bear Gets It.”
The line up of eight comedians, one singer and one larger than life polar bear’s head set piece featured Tim Minchin, Josie Long, Badly Drawn Boy and Richard Herring and was presented by Greg Davies.
Laughing all the way to the lighting desk was Entec’s Ryan Brown, who created a production lighting design for the evening – which resembled a festival in style and execution.
His aim was to complement the main set piece, a giant polystyrene polar bear’s head, so to connect this to its immediate environment, he imbibed the stage with an arctic ambience, choosing 24 Clay Paky HPE 300 moving lights as the main fixtures. These were rigged on two low-hung side stage trusses and a front truss. The ones on the side trusses were used to shoot beams diagonally across the stage in a selection of arctic colors: steel, pale blue and lavender.
The HPE 300s were also chosen as a powerful but energy efficient light source. “There was an element of trying to keep it as expedient on the power consumption as possible,” says Brown, in keeping with the theme of the evening.
Six Martin Professional MAC700s Washes were used as back lighting, contrasting in appearance with the side beams.
At the back of the set, Entec provided a 24 ft wide projection screen, which was fed with two Barco R10 projectors, edge blended together to form a single image. Content, a mix of logo loops, stings and pre-recorded VT footage, was stored on two Green Hippo Grasshopper media servers, which Brown triggered from the grandMA2 light console.
The lighting package also included two follow spots.
Jilia Barraclough from Friends of The Earth’s Events & Promotions department says, “It’s reassuring to work with a professional and proficient production company like Entec. After successfully working together in 2009 in bringing ‘LIVEstock’ to life, we had no doubt who we wanted to help us realize our vision for ‘Laugh or the Polar Bear Gets It.’
“Entec are friendly and truly lovely to work alongside, in addition to being effortlessly competent, highly creative and environmentally conscious, which is something that’s vital to Friends of the Earth.
“As one of our key signature fundraising events, we challenged Entec to work to a tight budget and deadline. They rose to this effortlessly, remaining flexible, lending us their expertise, suggestions and providing solutions with the end objective of helping us to achieve our targets by producing a high quality production,” Barraclough says.
The money raised will help fund Friends of the Earth’s critical campaigning work, including the fight against climate change and keeping the polar bears safe.
