When the newly-built St Edmund's Church in Temple Hill, Dartford was planned, a bold statement was wanted. So instead of the conventional crucifix, the church commissioned Japanese artist Tomoya Yamaguchi to paint two giant Christ figures - one in a crucifixion scene, the other depicting Christ as risen - on large scale white cross backgrounds.
Lighting for the feature was designed by Peter Moore of local company PM Lighting Services, in collaboration with lighting designer John Roffey. They planned to light the crosses at night, giving them a very different ambience to how they appear by day. However, the crosses were to be lit in blue, whereas the figures and their halos needed to be lit in white.
"We did experiment with edge lighting and other things, but none of them gave the impact that the church and I wanted," says Moore. "We really wanted the figures lit from the front. Then John and I thought that, with glass gobo technology having really developed in recent years, this could be the ideal solution.
"Having known DHA Lighting for many years, I approached them to help. So when DHA merged with Rosco, I was more than happy for Rosco to continue with the project." Rosco's Stephen Connolly was called in.
"The key problem was how to create gobos that would accurately illuminate the Christ figures and halos in white and the cross in blue, without spill," says Stephen. "Previous attempts had been made to produce a gobo from photographs of the figures, but as the optics of the camera were not matched to the optics of the luminaires and the camera positions weren't precisely the same as those of the gobos, a perfect outline was never achieved."
Connolly realised that this was a sensible way of approaching the problem, but it needed significant fine-tuning in order to get the focus and positioning of the outline absolutely perfect.
Then the solution hit him - use the luminaires that would be used for lighting the scenes as improvised cameras, with a photographic plate in the same position as the gobo would be. That way the optic would be the same and the point from where of the photograph was taken would be exactly where the finished gobo would be. And, by default, the image produced would precisely match the outline of the figure at that distance.
"For the immediacy of its results, we decided that Polaroid film would be the best medium," Stephen continues. "We built the improvised 'camera' with the Polaroid back sitting in the gobo plane and the lens of the luminaire seated in an adjustable tube, for focus. Finally, we attached a large format shutter to the front of the lens."
As predicted, the photographs thus taken exactly matched the gobo that was required. Rosco traced the images at 1:1 ratio and manufactured the gobo with that outline, meaning that blue light could be accurately projected on to the cross with white on to the figures.
Moore is very pleased with the result, as is the church: "We held a special evening at the church to launch the lighting, which included a ceremonial 'switch on'," he says. "The reaction from the attendees when they saw the lighting of the Christ figures was a gasp of appreciation and then a spontaneous round of applause. The gobos work extremely well, they absolutely transform the features at night. It looks stunning."
(Chris Henry)
