BERLIN — White Light supplied its first EvenLED units to the U.K. tour of Mary Poppins in mid-2008, and the system has subsequently been adopted by other shows including the London production of the musical Oliver! But the cyc lighting system is also helping designers meet challenges outside the theatre as well. At the SAP Teched ’08 Conference held at Berlin’s ICC, Glyn Peregrine was faced with just such a challenge. “The scenic design for the conferences required a solid block of color under a video front-projection screen,” Peregrine said. “Attempts to achieve this with LED battens and City Colors were not perfect. When I saw the EvenLED on the White Light Web site it appeared to me to be the ideal solution. Sight-unseen I decided to give it a try and frankly it was fantastic!”
The EvenLED is a 1-meter modular tile containing a four-by-four grid of three-color LEDs. Tiles can be linked together to form large arrays with power and data then daisy chained through tiles, serving as an easy-to-configure system. The wide angle LEDs mean that EvenLED can be used as close as 25cm to the back of a rear-projection screen yet will still give even coverage of the screen, and individual control of each LED allows for a range of lighting effects, from solid colors to wipes and dissolves to rainbows and other patterns.
For the Berlin project, Peregrine used a 2-meter-by-14-meter EvenLED grid behind a rear projection screen. He also used a second set of EvenLED panels in a more decorative manner, arranging five vertical columns in view as a backdrop to a concert given by Steve Winwood. This design allowed him to use the LEDs as a backdrop, and also to use the EvenLED’s white face as a projection surface for video and gobos.
Control for the EvenLED and the rest of the rig, which included six Mac 2000 Performance fixtures, 16 Mac2000 Washes, 28 Vari*Lite VL3500s, two 8-Lites, 20 Showtec Sunstrips and 24 Par64s. was from a Whole Hog 3 console programmed by Jean-Pascal Alouges. Neumann & Muller supplied the console, rig and crew with the set-up led by crew chief Brian Knox. With a tight load-in, just four days before the conference opened and then with an overnight turnaround for the Winwood concert, the designer and programmer also used WYSIWYG to pre-program the concert lighting.
The show has left Peregrine very impressed with EvenLED. “It is a fantastic product which we needed more time to explore in depth, but even in a short period of time we managed to create lots of effects and razzmatazz.”
“We are delighted that more and more designers from across every field of lighting are discovering what an amazing tool EvenLED is,” said Dave Isherwood, White Light hire and technical director. “It reinforces the belief we had in the product when we became the first to purchase it last spring, and we look forward to introducing it to many more designers in the months to come.”
For more information, please visit www.martin.com and www.WhiteLight.Ltd.uk.
