LONDON – PRG (Production Resource Group) delivered the lighting and rigging for Tim Routledge’s lighting design for Muse at Horse Guards Parade in June. The free concert, staged to celebrate the London premiere of the apocalyptic action film ‘World War Z’, saw LD Routledge create a design that reflected the film’s themes in epic style.
More details from PRG (www.prg.com):
In charge of the project for PRG was account director Mick Healey. “Paramount Pictures wanted to create a big splash in London to mark the premiere of ‘WWZ’,” he explains. “Because Muse had written and performed elements of the film’s music score, a Muse concert at an iconic site in London was desired, so Paramount spoke to Live Nation and they brought in Steve Nolan. It was Steve that suggested Horse Guards Parade. Steve spent around two weeks getting all the right permissions for the project via meetings with the police, the army and No.10 security. Every detail from truck access through to the safety of the public had to be carefully negotiated, which demanded a significant degree of diplomacy and patience!”
On site the project was split into two major elements. The first entailed lighting the buildings around Horse Guards Parade to create Routledge’s all encompassing, ‘day of reckoning’ world. The second element was the stage and audience lighting, which included the park (behind the stage).
Working alongside a number of other entertainment technology suppliers, the PRG team, led by Mick Healey and senior account manager Kelly Cornfield along with Simon Baker as LX crew chief, ran the gruelling fit-up schedule with military precision. Healey explains: “The main challenge for us was definitely the time constraints. We were given very limited access to Horse Guards Parade prior to the Sunday 2 June event.”
However, despite these seemingly insurmountable challenges, the PRG team successfully realized Routledge’s design. The Z shaped stage was packed with lighting both in the floor and along the edge. An extensive multilayered rig was also built above the stage along with four huge lighting masts, which took care of the audience lighting.
Routledge programmed the show alongside programmer Jonathan Rouse and content specialist Miguel Ribeiro on two wysiwyg systems, which PRG had installed in an onsite office in the adjacent park.
“PRG put together a team of three key people to make my life easier and give me the confidence of putting the show together in time,” says Routledge. “To gaffer the job, we used Simon Baker and his calm and methodical nature just made the job work – to say the installation was ambitious would be conservative at least. I also had Jonathan Rouse as my second programmer and Miguel Ribiero to manage all the video content and pixel mapping requirements that came in. We had a mixture of content from Paramount and from the band and Miguel ensured all of this was frame synchronous for the whole show.
“It wasn’t a stressful show to do as we had huge backup from Mick Healey at PRG and all the right people onsite – PRG had to react very quickly to changes in extras in the final week as the broadcast elements were finalized adding a number of Liteware LED up lighters, VL2k Wash, Divalights, Parabeams and much more for the red carpet and press areas along with VL3500 Spot and Source 4 for keylighting onstage. PRG also supplied 4 Super Trooper followspots.
“The resulting footage from the show is nothing short of epic.”
