MANCHESTER, U.K. —The set for Prima Donna, a new opera written by Rufus Wainright and performed at this year’s Manchester Festival, was lit with 111 panels of EvenLED, a modular LED cyc backlighting system. EvenLED, which was first supplied by White Light to the U.K. tour of Mary Poppins in 2008, has since been used, not just for opera, but also for television, corporate events and comedy.
“I think it’s the best new piece of kit I’ve seen in ages — I never want to light a cyc again without it,” said Peter Mumford, LD for Prima Donna, who used it to light the set by Anthony McDonald.
“I was able to use EvenLED for the cyc, but also for the back ‘glass’ wall of an enormous room — and even ‘raw and exposed’ in intense green for one of the enormous scene changes,” added Mumford. “The sequence for the aria ‘Feu D’artifice,’ with the EvenLED behind a BP and a huge window, was really beautiful.”
EvenLED was also used to create a fireworks display for the show, “a moment which Jack Thompson, the festival’s technical director, called “quite wonderful.”
EvenLED’s TV appearance came as part of Sky Television’s Sky Arts Theatre Live season, six new short plays, which were performed, live to a studio audience while simultaneously broadcast in HD on Sky Arts 1.
The third play, Famous Last, had a sky in view beyond the windows of the set. In the words of director John Alderton, this had to reflect a world outside where “no-one knows what is happening — is it searchlights, is it flashbulbs, is it fire, sirens, the world ending? No one should really know, so each member of the audience decides for themselves.”
With space limited in the studio, EvenLED proved well-suited — able to light a 4-meter-by-3-meter BP cyc at a throw of around 30cm. The EvenLED also proved easy to rig and, with its silent operation, without distracting background sound for the boom mics to pick up.
With the show’s lighting designed by Sky’s Iain Davidson, the EvenLED was looked after by Rob Halliday using a grandMA console to create looks ranging from graduated day and night skys to abstract undefinable movement and searchlights.
The Sky team credited the EvenLED for practicality and artistic possibilities, noting that a test carried out at the studio also revealed that they work well as a background for chroma-key effects, able to change chroma color instantaneously, if required.
EvenLED’s role in comedy included its appearance with the Eddie Izzard Tour, playing arenas throughout the U.K., Europe and then the U.S. LD Keith Johnson is using a system of over 200 panels controlled by Hippo Critter media servers to create a backdrop.
Similar systems have been put to use on corporate events and parties by a range of designers, including White Light’s corporate events team at Britain’s Natural History Museum.
In addition to EvenLED, White Light is now selling the LedCyc9 Panel from LDDE, along with Coemar’s StageLite LED FX, an LED fixture designed to work as a more conventional asymmetric cyc floodlight but with adjustable beam control.
“When we first supplied EvenLED last year, we said that it was bringing cyc lighting into the 21st Century,” said White Light managing director Bryan Raven, “and the reaction of lighting designers has backed that up. We are delighted that EvenLED has sparked other new developments in LED cyc lighting which, as always, we are offering as part of our aim to give lighting designers exactly the tools they need for any given project.”
For more information, please visit www.WhiteLight.Ltd.uk.
