Too fragile for public exhibition, the display of dresses was open to the world's leading media in order to allow a wider audience to experience them. Ahead of the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, the dresses received global coverage, filmed by BBC, ITN, Channel 4, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN as well as Australian, Canadian, French, German and Japanese broadcasters.
The extremely delicate and intricate task of lighting the six wedding gowns fell to Richard Lambert, who chose fixtures from ETC's SeladorTM white light LustrTM range.
The challenges were many. To ensure that the preservation of the dresses was not compromised, they could not be exposed to over 200 lux at any point - calculated on elements like room temperature, the age and nature of the different dress materials, and their individual storage methods.
The drawing room also has limited power, each dress required at least three lightsources and everything had to feed off the available supply. With the Seladors drawing only 1.05 amps each, this was viable. Additionally, the lighting fixtures had to be as unobtrusive as possible in the room.
Lambert specified 18 Selador Lustr units in total, all of which were rigged on Manfrotto stands. Lambert pre-lit the exhibition - top secret until a week before the Royal Wedding, and then open to the press for a few days only - using mannequins in the designated positions. Once the dresses were in place, some tweaks were necessary requiring the alteration of a couple of the lens configurations. However, this was a quick and easy exercise illustrating the flexibility of the Lustr system.
Mark White, ETC's regional manager for the UK and Ireland, says, "ETC's Selador Lustr LED fixtures were specifically designed with a patented system to render whites very accurately, and so are popular in TV studios worldwide. The subtle creams and whites of the wedding dresses were illuminated at just the right levels with the correct tints in the right colour temperatures, providing a heat-free environment that would not damage any of the fragile fabrics and materials."
(Jim Evans)
