Going big with Michael McIntyre’s Big Show
Saturday night saw the return of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show on BBC1. After a 3 year break, the team were delighted to be back at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the 6th series of the show. Liteup Account Manager Dan Bunn returned as Gaffer, and we were also delighted to win the tender to supply the equipment and crew to realise the stunning lighting design created by award winning Lighting Designer Nigel Catmur. The return to the theatre brought its own challenges, having to fit our show in around the existing rig for Frozen without any interference. By working closely with the Theatre’s Electrics department, as well as Technical Manager Matt Wright and Deputy Technical Manager Michael Biglad Shaw, we were able to achieve this with relative ease, designing a full Front of House rig that could stay in for the entire run (with a few tweaks), and a stage rig that could be quickly loaded in and out each week within the tight time constraints we had.
Equipment supplied by Liteup for the run included 91 x Martin Professional Mac Aura XB’s, 28 x ROBE lighting Esprite’s, 22 x Robe Around The UK Mega Pointe’s, 30 x Robe Spikie’s, 4 x Robe RoboSpot systems complete with Motion Camera’s and BMFL Blades, 6 x Ayrton Diablo’s, 90 x Luxibel B-PAR105’s and 6 x GLP – German Light Products JDC-1’s. Control was provided by a pair of MA Lighting International Grand MA Lights, as well as a pair of Compulite Vector’s (Provided by Oliver Lifely). This was all run over a fibre network, with Luminex Network Intelligence Gigacore 16XT’s, Gigacore 10’s, and Luminode 12’s and 2’s at the heart of the system. Combined with our SIXTY82 Truss, the entire system worked faultlessly week in, week out. We also facilitated a number of weekly extras, including Astera Titan Tubes & Pixel Bricks, as well as GLP X4 Bar 20’s.
We of course couldn’t have achieved this without a brilliant team of people, both in the warehouse and on site.
Lighting Design – Nigel Catmur
Key Light Operator – Oliver Lifely
Moving Light Operator – Martin Higgins
Media Server Operator – Matthew Lee
Gaffer – Dan Bunn
Overnight Gaffer – Adam Martin
Lighting Crew – Steven Haynes, Adam Jones, David Peters, Luke Hornbuckle, Rebecca Anna Hughes, Jon Nunn, Joseph Peal, David Selmes, Sam Whitby, Ryan Harrington, Henry Danton Gillett, James Lock, Billy Jones, James Gardner, Marc Callaghan, Mark Jones, Amrit Sondh, Jed Eastall-Baker, Shaun Graham.
Photos Courtesy of Hungry McBear.
