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DBN illuminates two shows of Hull Freedom festival

DBN Lighting from Manchester recently designed and supplied lighting equipment to two site-specific shows in Hull created by outdoor arts and performance specialists Walk The Plank, in their role as artistic directors of Hull Freedom festival - a diverse mix of arts, music and cultural events staged over three days in and around the city of Hull, UK. DBN is a regular collaborator with Walk The Plank.

DBN’s Stephen Page and Nick Walton lit the two one-off shows which formed two of the main spectacular set pieces for the festival: ‘Voices of Freedom’ and ‘Over and Out‘. Directed by Nick Clarke and produced by Ellie Turner for Walk The Plank, the dramatic action included a boat moving up and down the River Hull with one of the main characters on-board standing on a tower, and Hull’s own Freedom Chorus choir performing on a bridge.

For ‘Voices of Freedom’, Stephen Page had many specific areas to light including two bridges, assorted buildings, the choir and the actors. Scale Lane Bridge was illuminated with five Clay Paky Sharpies and five Sharpie Washes helping to establish the ‘voice of the river’ through the medium of light. The voice appeared during the narrated elements of the especially composed sound-track by Graeme Stewart. Additional bridge lighting came in the form of Spectral LED PARs plus around 500 fairy lights.

To light the river and the relevant surrounding buildings, Page utilised four of DBN’s new Studio Due RGBW CityColor LED FCs. He also deployed four CP Mythos and 10 x Alpha Beam 700s in DBN custom weather domes either side of the river bank, together with some Atomic strobes, with the data signal to the far side beamed via WDMX wireless links. CP GlowUp battery powered LED uplighters on the boat were also controlled via WDMX.

Page ran all the lighting using a Jands Vista S3 console located on the east side of the river using a combination of time-coded and manually executed cues. Programming time was restricted on site as the area is heavily residential, therefore Page used WYSIWYG previsualisation. He worked on site with two DBN crew - Moss Everhard and Andy Pole - getting in on Wednesday for the Friday performance.

Across town, on a piece of wasteland near Hull’s docks, on the Saturday night of the Freedom festival, Nick Walton took up position behind the Avo Pearl Expert console being operated by Mike Durgan for “Over and Out”, designed by WTP’s pyro expert Pete Finnigan. Based around a (scenic) 12 metre tall lighthouse, the show featured three key actors plus local volunteers and was directed by Carrie English for Walk The Plank, complete with a special soundtrack created by Pablo. Walton had lit the show before in Newcastle when it was part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. This time it was specially adapted for the new space in Hull.

In this instance, the role of lighting was to incorporate the structure and highlight the actors who work on three different levels of the lighthouse as well as across the floor immediately around it. The primary factor in choosing equipment was that it had to be durable and “as resistant as possible to fire and heat and all the hot debris and fall out from the pyro” recalls Walton, admitting that a few pieces of kit had in fact been incinerated in 2012.

The next challenge for the lighting was to ensure it was visible amidst the power and onslaught of the fire effects. To achieve this, eight i-Pix BB4 LED binders were secured to the tower and 100 metres of egg-strobes were draped up and down it. Eight Studio Due ArchiLED 150 outdoor PARs were positioned on the floor in front, the second environmental consideration, and a further 24 generic flood fixtures also on the floor were used to light the actors from different angles. Further away, to create some washes sweeping across the performance area, Walton used four more of DBN’s stock of the new RGBW CityColor LED FCs.

Behind the tower at a safe distance was a bank of 12 x Clay Paky Sharpies. They were joined in this position by a pair of Griven Sky Rose 2.5K discharge beam fixtures. At the same position from the front were four CP Alpha Spot 575s, used to apply texturing to the structure. Walton and Durgan were joined on the crew by Stefan Ospafijczuk.

(Photos: Tom Arran/Glen Meskell)

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