The lighting has been installed by Ian Austin of Kent, UK-based STL Lighting, who purchased the Titans specially for the exhibition from DTS's UK distributors, Lightfactor.
Austin designed both interior and exterior lighting schemes for Dinosaurs Unleashed, which ran until May on the Land Securities Parklife site in Oxford Street, London. The brainchild of Nicky Allison of Progressive Events, the slightly industrial setting made an appropriate home for the 24 dinosaurs, one of a number of temporary events/uses that maximized the prime real estate during a break in the ongoing process of redeveloping the site.
Austin's initial brief was to deal with the exterior elements, but that later extended to lighting the interior exhibits as well.
With limited power available on site, LED was an obvious option, and he needed a good IP65 rated fixture for outdoors. Having already purchased a quantity of LED from Lightfactor, Peter Coles suggested he look at the Titan, which has a light output similar to that of a medium flood PAR 64 can.
This resulted in the purchase of 18 Titans, which were dotted around the site highlighting the beasts in a variety of edgy shades and colours. Austin was impressed with the way they stood up to the inclement weather during the London exhibition, which was truly appalling for much of the time with freezing temperatures and frequent downpours.
For the Bournemouth show, the Titans are being used to colour wash the roof of the domed hall, showing the fixture's versatility.
The Titans and other lighting for the 15 exterior exhibits in London were controlled by a LightProcessor QCommander 512 console, and all the dimmed lighting inside and out was powered by a combination of different LightProcessor Paradim dimmers. The QCommander and a LightProcessor Zip desk for interior control were selected for their simplicity and ease of use. They were pre-programmed with a number of different shows, so all the duty managers had to do each day was press one button to play.
The entranceway was lit with a selection of Source Fours complete with camouflage style break-up gobos and LDR 1K fresnels for colour washing the area. The LDRs were also purchased from Lightfactor.
STL does a lot of architectural lighting and other exterior work, so the Titans are now generally available from hire stock.
Dinosaurs Unleashed is scheduled to move from Bournemouth to another location in September, and will also do a Christmas show at a venue to be confirmed.
(Jim Evans)
