LONDON – Renegade produced and supplied all the technical design and equipment – lighting, video and visuals, set and scenic elements plus sound – for the SHINE 2010 Benefit Dinner, staged at The Boiler House, a new temporary structure located inside the shell of London's iconic Battersea Power Station building. The event featured a performance by Bryan Ferry to help raise funds for the charity, which supports additional educational initiatives encouraging children and young people to raise their achievement levels.
Renegade has worked closely with SHINE for the last seven years, producing all their live events. The 2010 Benefit Dinner was project-managed for Renegade by Mike Fidler who worked with Nick Gray as lighting designer. Andy Cobb filled in with conceptual designs along with technical production manager, Chad Higgins, who completed the team.
Renegade's visual design included large format video projections onto the visible end of the Power Station building, producing a visual montage for dinner guests using custom content provided by Nathan Prince of Silent Studio.
Renegade and SHINE wanted a specific look and feel to the event, and the venue allowed Renegade to bring in some of their own suppliers. "Our key creative and production people have now all worked on several projects together, so there is a fluid ongoing exchange of imagination and communications which really makes the workflow on a complex, multi-layered show like this efficient," Gray noted.
The exterior chimneys of the Power Station were lit using eight Philips ColorReach TR Powercore LED wash fixtures, with the brick facade illuminated by Vari*Lite 3500 washes, complete with two Martin Professional MAC 3K profiles used for corporate branding.
The fiberglass tunnel at the venue's entrance was lit using wireless (and weatherproofed) uplighters from SHOK London, and Minuette fresnels. A second wooden tunnel into the actual Boiler House was lined with two 50-meter runs of electroluminescent Light Tape, with ETC Source Four profiles shooting beams up the walls for additional impact.
The entrance lobby featured an installation of 24 giant vintage light bulbs, each with oversized filaments and a sultry glow, created by Nick Gray above the cloakroom counter, which was finished in a mirrored surface to enhance the effect.
Renegade's external lighting design matched the colors and textures of the video content projected by six 18K Christie projectors on the back wall, washing the structure and chimneys with four MAC 3Ks, eight VARI*LITE 3500 FXs and six Atomic strobes.
The main projection canvas was the Power Station's rear wall, which was facing the dinner guests. With metalwork obscuring a direct head on beam path, the projectors had to be crossed over, which made alignment trickier and intensified the need for perspective correction. This was all adjusted within the Pandora's Box media server, programmed and operated by Jack Banks, who also masked all the images to fit the exact contours of the architecture.
The projector towers were concealed to the side of the marquee so guests had a clear view of all the projections and lighting.
The animations were all based on concepts of light, power and electricity. The idea was to maintain an abstract, almost geometric theme that evolved slowly through the night, touching on the form and flow of movement conjured up by electricity. From the pulsing of a tiny proton particle to the swirling nuclear mass of a sun, the designs played on the Power Station, bringing enhanced depth to the facade and evoking a sense of a powerful, unreleased energy emanating from within.
The footage started in a sedate, subtle manner with minimal movement to allow the audience to grasp the sheer scale of the surface. This changed as dinner progressed, and by the time the speeches started, the kinetic movement of the images increased, reaching a frenzy during the band and DJ performances.
Inside, the main space was lit to avoid reflections bouncing off the clear PVC roof of The Boiler House – which would have obscured a clear view of the projections. This used 26 i-Pix BB7 LED washes, 14 VARI*LITE 2500 spots and a selection of pin spots & PAR cans. These were rigged off five overhead flown trusses.
At the back of the stage, three upright trussing towers attached to the tent legs. They served as rigging points for 12 i-Pix BB4s, 12 MAC 301 moving LED units, 12 Mac 250 Entours , eight Atomic strobes, eight 2-lites and MAC 2K washes and two hazers.
Trent O'Connor used a Hog 3 console to program and control the lighting inside and out.
Tru Staging and Sculptivate set up the stage and provided all the scenic elements and room dressing.
With a limited amount of time on site, the Renegade team visualised and pre-programmed as much of the visuals and lighting as possible in their WYSIWYG suite. This was then moved to Silent Studio's east London HQ for a day for fine-tuning and to ensure that everything was harmonious both inside and out.
The weather was a major technical challenge while working on site, with heavy rain and gale force winds hampering the rigging and upping the pressure on the already limited load-in time frames.
"We factored in as much pre-planning and preparation as possible. Having our visualisation facilities on hand really made a difference to the time we could devote to developing the show and results we achieved for the client," noted Nick Gray.
For more information, please visit www.renegadedesign.co.uk.
