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HSL busy with panto season

HSL busy with panto season
HSL busy with panto season

For the 2016/17 pantomime season HSL are supplying lights, LED fixtures and rigging including one Kinesys automation system to twenty different productions for panto producer QDos. Some statistics include nearly 2000 intelligent lighting fixtures and over 500 generics, 100 plus Kilometres of cabling and over 2000 custom gobos, all of which were shipped out of HSL’s HQ in Blackburn (UK) in an operation that has been overall project managed by Jordan Hanson working closely with Emma Nolan and John Slevin.

 

Individual shows have been project managed by Andy Chatburn, who handled four productions; Mark Shakeshaft who also co-ordinated four; Sean McGlone, who looked after seven and John Slevin, who ran the largest single show, ‘Aladdin’ at the SECC’s Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow starring Marti Pellow. Jordan Hanson himself also PM’d four productions. One of this years’ new venues was the London Palladium which featured ‘Cinderella’, lit by Ben Cracknel.

 

For this year’s featured panto, HSL headed south and visited Pete Watts’ scheme for ‘Robin Hood’ at Southampton’s Mayflower. HSL supplied 48 moving lights and lots of LED PARs which were used together with substantial numbers of generics from the house rig. Set design was by Ian Westbrook.

 

The Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs were the core of the overhead lighting rig, spread out on the over-stage bars and used for the basic illumination of actors, set and stage as well as effects like gobo work on the floor, set texturing, etc. Positioned front-of-house were Robe Pointes, four on the stage left and right pros booms and eight on the advanced truss. Zoomed out with frost added, they also made washes and brighteners for the downstage area.

 

Robe 300E Spots on the advanced truss were used for random highlighting and key lighting, as well as for front fill and pointing into the audience. Four more in the slips boxes, two on the floor at the bottom of the pros booms and another two in the boxes for side-fills and audience work also all contributed to the walk-in state, projecting gobos around the walls of the auditorium.

 

More ColorSpot 1200E ATs rigged on the sides of the circle-bar augmented the audience/pre-set looks and were used to pick up a 40 inch mirror ball flown downstage, while another four deployed on the circle front primarily dressed the cloths and projected the ‘wanted’ posters for the walk-in. A single Martin MAC 3K in the middle of the dress circle was shuttered off to frame the cloths onstage, and used as an overall layer of soft-focussed texturing/colouring across the whole area. Philips SL 150 LED PARs from HSL were placed on the three side booms and used to dress the set, cross over onto the floor and provide shin-buster level light for the dance sequences, with the other two on the circle front.

 

HSL also supplied over 100 metres of new Egg Strobe Festoons which were integrated into various set pieces. Five Atomic strobes accompanied the thunder cracks every time the ‘Sheriff of  Nottingham’ appeared, and seven Philips eStrip 10 LED battens along the front of the stage in the footlight position were there for audience blinding moments.

 

In addition to all these elements, Pete Watts utilized 206 house generic fixtures - a mix of different lensed Source Four profiles and fresnels, some PARs and 3-cell codas positioned around the rig. The show was programmed by George Russell, who also worked on the other two pantos lit by Watts this year in Aberdeen and Wolverhampton. Lighting was run on the Mayflower’s house ETC Gio console by their technician Claire Baker. ‘Robin Hood’ at the Mayflower was directed by Nick Winston, Aiden Jones was the Production LX and Pete Kramer the production manager.

 

www.hslgroup.com

 

HSL busy with panto seasonHSL busy with panto season

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