142 TECHNOLOGY / THE ARC SHOW PREVIEW
PROJECT FILE DURHAM MARENGHI
The man charged with curating this year’s ARC Show wowed London at the start of the year with a spectacular New Year’s light and firework display.
In a year that sees the Olympic Games finally arrive in London, the creation of a spectular New Year’s Eve event was perhaps more important than ever as a way of giving the world a taste of what to expect this summer.
No surprise then that production company Jack Morton Worldwide called on Durham Marenghi - a man whose credits include sev- eral Olympic opening and closing ceremo- nies - to help create a firework and light display worthy of a world city. In Marenghi’s stunning lighting design, tem- porary Arena Color fixtures and high power searchlights installed by Stage Electrics and supplied by ELP/Syncrolite were integrated with the permanent lighting installations on the London Eye and County Hall. At the climax of the event, the lighting was synchronised with the fantastic midnight firework display, designed by Darryl Fleming of Kimbolton Fireworks. Year-round, 640 Philips Color Kinetics ColorCasts illuminate the Eye, supplied by
Architainment Lighting and controlled by two Pharos LPC 2s. The façade of County Hall is floodlit with Philips Color Kinetics ColorReach Powercore LEDs, also supplied by Architainment and also controlled by another Pharos LPC 1. This is the sixth New Year’s Eve that Pharos has been involved: every year since the London Eye lighting refit in 2006. In the afternoon of 31st December, the discrete Pharos systems were uploaded with special programming for the event, their internal clocks are synchronised with a GPS time- code receiver, and then they’re left to perform by themselves. Programming is ac- curate to a hundredth of a second and is in step with the ChamSys lighting consoles and the fireworks controller.
Naturally the focus is on the breathtaking midnight sequence but the show design includes lighting for the whole evening dur- ing the build up to the celebrations. Pharos Technical Product Manager Simon Hicks has programmed the Pharos systems for Durham
for the last five years. He explains, “This is the time when we can really show off what we can do with the Eye - for the rest of the year the lighting is mostly static with a few subtle effects to mark certain occasions.” Durham has also commented that, “Light- ing is used to complement and enhance the firework display as well as creating an ex- citing and dynamic atmosphere of anticipa- tion before the midnight chimes of Big Ben to entertain the 250,000 people gathered in Westminster to witness the event and the millions who enjoy the broadcast on the BBC.”
www.durhamld.com
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