A TONIC FOR THE TROOPS

In the City of London on May 7, appropriately one of spring’s sunniest days, the great and the good attended a significant charitable event. Named the City Salute, the focus of the day was to raise funds for Headley Court, the British military’s specialist hospital in Surrey, and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA), the provider of support for families of service personnel.

    Staged in the historic environs of St Paul’s Cathedral with the involvement of their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Harry, this was always going to be a significant event and only the events industry’s top brass were to be relied on to produce it.

    Graham Pullen, the special projects director for Live Nation, pulled together a team that included PRG, Britannia Row Productions, E\T\C and XL Video.  Broadcast live on BBC2, the show was seen by over two million viewers, while 10,000 were in attendance.

    “The chosen event location was difficult to say the least,” said show designer Mark Cunniffe, who was engaged by Pullen in January to oversee, design and give what was in essence a military display, an exciting theatrical context.

    “What started as a more contained gala hosted by Saracen Investments became a major event with every part of the military involved and encompassing all the main financial institutions surrounding St Paul’s.”

    A safe pair of hands with great experience in these type of events, Cunniffe applied his usual finesse to lighting, exploiting the architectural detail of St Paul’s in colour and texture, but it was his decision to project images on to the Cathedral’s iconic façade that proved most daring.

    Brit Row and XL Video provided the PA and daylight screens in the surrounding streets of Paternoster Square, Ludgate Hill and Temple Bar, enabling the attending public and service families to watch and hear the full program as it unfolded in front of St Paul’s west entrance.

    An Outline Butterfly line array system was flown from Summit Steel SmarTmasts by Brit Row, while L-Acoustics Arcs formed distributed fills along with Turbosound Impact speakers on the balcony of NatWest House. Further Arcs were rigged in conventional stereo fashion for Joss Stone’s VIP concert on the roof of the Saracen Investment building.

    E\T\C provided the projectors that so dramatically brought the imagery of military endeavour to life upon the Cathedral’s façade. PRG supplied extensive lighting in and around the display area, and in collusion with Cunniffe pulled off one of the real coups of the night, by close lighting the Stone Gallery and Portico off just three two-gang domestic 13A sockets.
    “LED lighting is what made it work,” explained Cunniffe. “A few years ago this just would not have been possible — powerful LEDs just didn’t exist.”

    Within his design, Cunniffe used 24 of i-Pix’s new BB7 fixtures — a seven cell, high power homogenized 10° RGB wash light using a custom Lamina light engine. This fixture consumes just 210W at 240V, and proved ideal for the task.

    Commenting on the BB7, Cunniffe said: “It has incredible light output for so little power, and great colour rendition,” says Cunniffe, who worked closely with programmer and Wholehog II console operator Ross Williams.

    Other LED sources included PixelPars and SGM Palcos for soft washes. These worked in conjunction with 60 Vari*Lite VL3000s and 3500s, HMI washlights, profiles and follow spots, and six Syncrolite B53 10kW Xenon searchlights. The disparate lighting was controlled via Daft Data WiFi DMX.

    Cunniffe added that in the future he plans to use a combination of BB7s and Vari*Lites (used to light the main façade surface area) again as they work very well together.

    The event began with an flypast by RAF Chinooks and Typhoons, and saw many elements of military personnel and machinery parade past the Cathedral, and ended with a tumultuous blast of gunfire, smoke and lighting from HMS Belfast, which is moored down on the Thames.

    “This was put together by a tight, well-motivated team,” concluded Pullen. “As a charity event, much of Mark’s role in co-ordinating all these different elements at planning stage was crucial to the show’s integrity. But never forget, every individual member of the military contributes in their own special way; that’s an unspoken truth and it was a very potent message.”

TPi