This was staged on the Cranhill Estate - a notorious, sprawling, dilapidated 1950s housing scheme in Glasgow's Easterhouse area. Glasgow Home directed and conceived by John Tiffany (deputy director of NTS) was one of 10 site-specific works that kick started the NTS, which has no permanent base. The production was centred around an 18-storey tower block on the estate, and was set in seven different flats on seven different floors. The concept was that characters in the tower were being investigated by MI5, who sent abseiling cameramen down the side of the building filming the action taking place inside. This was relayed to a projector at the base and beamed onto the side of a 7.5 tonne truck, masquerading as an MI5 vehicle.
Lighting designer Natasha Chivers had to light three distinct areas - the building exterior, a glass-fronted roof space at the very top of the tower and the seven individual flats for the cameramen. She brought in production electrician Jon Clark to help achieve the task, and it was he who specified the eDMX system. "Having worked on the original testing of the system, I thought it was an ideal opportunity to put the system through its paces in an extreme environment," he says.
The flats were up-lit with 12 Studio Due City Colors and City Beams located on the ground, the roof space was illuminated with two VL2000s, while the flats were lit with a series of Sun Floods and Redheads, complete with a dimmer in each flat. There were also two Martin MAC Performance's projecting gobos onto the tower and four PixelPARs up-lighting two narrow architectural troughs running up its full height.
Clark used three eDMX wireless decoders, one on the roof space and one each in flats on the 6th and 10th floors, and one receiver, placed by the Strand 520i lighting console in a transit van parked at the base of the tower. "It would have been extremely difficult and long winded to do without eDMX and would have involved some really tricky cable runs," says Clark, adding that using the wireless system also added to the whole theatricality of the piece! Although he'd seen the dAFTdATA system in action on the London Eye, he was doubly impressed with the way the signal permeated the thick concrete walls and steel infrastructure of the building, remaining strong from every point. "There was no latency at all - the resolution was fantastic," he says. "Once the system was set up it needed no attention at all - it just worked throughout."
The 45-minute show was staged over two nights in perishingly cold weather and was enjoyed by an enthusiastic audience. Lighting equipment was supplied by Northern Light, and Clark worked closely with Kevin Murray of NTS and Kevin Robertson of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama plus three students. Production manager was Stuart Hayes.
(Lee Baldock)
