HSL was brought in to work with White Lies by Darren Snape of Vertical Management right at the start of their meteoric career two years ago, which has since experienced a steep upwards trajectory. This was their largest production tour to date and included two sold out nights at London's Brixton Academy. HSL's project manager Mike Oates says: "It's extremely rewarding seeing a talented band grow, and Chris's designs, which are always exciting and innovative, evolve."
Megginson began the creative process for this one by presenting some ideas to the band to get them energised about the lighting. They wanted a massive wall of PAR cans to define the stage space, so they ended up with an upstage grid eight high by 16 wide of lamps, utilising a total of 128 500W Ray-Lites.
The Wall PARs were hung on standard six-lamp bars with four cans per bar to give a 600mm separation between all of them on both horizontal and vertical planes. The bars were hung below one another on steel ropes, and HSL devised a rapid rigging system whereby the first row was attached to the truss and levelled with a turnbuckle. The truss was then flown out and the next row of lamp bars added - and so on - until the Wall construction was complete.
There were also three overhead trusses - front, mid and rear. The back truss featured four Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs along with four Atomic strobes with colour-changers, rigged in pairs, plus two bars of ACLs. The mid truss had a repeat of the rear fixture configuration.
The front truss was rigged with four i-Pix BB4s used for a general stage wash, four ETC Source Four profiles for some key lighting to cover the downstage 'posing' positions and five 4-way square Molefeys for audience blinding, with the centre one rigged higher to make a subtle arch shape.
Across the back on the stage floor were six Vari*Lite 3500 Washes to illuminate the cyc. Most of the key lighting was achieved with eight PAR 30 footlights around the front of the stage.
HSL's crew were Andy Hilton and Tom Wright, joined by Ian Stevens to tech the Falcon Beams for the Brixton and Manchester Apollo shows.
Says Megginson: "HSL have once again been brilliant - the kit was in great condition, the service and support from Mike as a project manager was fantastic and the crew were just fabulous."
(Jim Evans)
