PR agency Sinclair Mason came up with the idea of turning the tower red back in September 2002 as part of a documentary on Comic Relief for Children's BBC and got in touch with lighting and large format projection specialist Fourth Phase London. To create the radiant tower, Fourth Phase employed lighting designer Paul Cook, who, in turn, opted for some industry-standard equipment to fulfil the brief. Two Pani BP6s were used to project images, logos and telephone numbers onto the tower, whilst ten 3kW Syncrolite searchlights panned the sky above Fitzrovia. Providing the intense red colour were 58 Brightlights, 24 Vari*Lite 5 Arcs, 24 MBI Fixtures, nine Arena Visions, eight Mac 2000s and two Lightning Strikes, all connected by 10km of cable. "The majority of the lighting equipment was on the fifth floor, pointing upwards," said Paul Cook. "However, as the sightline to the top of the tower is obscured by a range of satellite dishes, more equipment was located on the 35th and 37th floors to enable the colour coverage to continue above the 35th floor."
It all came to a close on Saturday afternoon, after children singing on the roof of Broadcasting House were filmed with the tower in the background as part of a pre-recording for the Comic Relief programme to be screened on March 14th. Photographers from all the national newspapers were clicking away from the seventh floor of Broadcasting House, while camera crews had a bird's eye view from the nearby Euston Tower, Westminster University roof, Centre Point and Shell buildings, as well as from a helicopter circling the area. The blazing tower also hit the headlines with live broadcasts for BBC national and London News.
"This is not the first time Fourth Phase has worked at the BT Tower," James Hall at Fourth Phase London told us. "Alan Thomson, our managing director, was involved with promoting the change to 0171 and 0181 numbers in 1990, and then with VE Day celebrations in 1995. The biggest problem this year has been the logistics in terms of getting the equipment in position, with the tons of equipment having to share the lifts with the numerous people going about their daily working routine. For the equipment on the fifth floor, there was the added complication of having to wheel the gear through galleries full of telecoms equipment and lifting it out onto the fifth floor roof terrace with chain hoists. In an ideal world we would have craned everything in, but the five week time-scale didn't allow for such luxuries!"
(Ruth Rossington)
