Lighting Carols from King’s College, Cambridge

For the last 77 years the BBC has been transmitting the annual Carols and Lessons service at Christmas from King’s College, Cambridge.

For millions of radio listeners (and now TV viewers) around the world it marks the ‘official’ beginning of the festive period.

ELP have been providing location lighting, rigging and power for the TV broadcast of the service for a more modest 5 years and in that time have helped Lighting Director Bernie Davis develop and refine his approach.

Sensitive rigging required

In previous years, lighting for the audience, organ, walls and ceiling had all been done from the narrow ledge over the choir stalls. However, a review of safety practices decided that it was not safe to work at height without a harness, and there was no way a harness could be attached to the ancient walls without disfiguring the chapel.

So some ‘sensitive’ rigging was performed by the ELP team. Using a variety of custom mountings a vertical truss was placed at each corner of the choir area, allowing a few lamps on each for ‘lifting’ the very dark woodwork, organ, and audience.
A simple black cloth disguised the truss for the recording.

Did someone just dump these here?

The famous Kings College roof was almost entirely lit from the ‘ante chapel’ (where those with less favourable tickets sit) which is not seen in the TV coverage.

Small clusters of lamps dotted around the place confused some of the production team who assumed that the equipment had been powered but not rigged as it looked more like a lighting store or a bunch of lights that someone had just dumped….but as ELP have learnt with Bernie…. everything is deliberate with nothing left to chance.

Naturally, with Bernie Davis’s direction ELP’s range of Arri Junior Fresnels and Source 4’s did their job admirably.

The shadows left by the lighting were filled by the light through the stained glass window, giving a colourful haze. Four Arrisun 4KW MSR PARs were placed outside the building on the lawns to beam light through the stained glass windows and into the Chapel. This produced a wonderfully festive effect.

You’ll never guess how we came up with this!

The Lighting Director took great delight in describing how the production team used clever adapters that allowed the lights illuminating the choristers’ music to also lift their faces, thus giving them a natural candle-lit effect.

He demonstrated the adapter and fittings that transform the regular chorister’s candle holder and explained that the pipe used to make them came from a vehicle barrier that had been accidentally snapped off at the BBC OB base. It had then been sawn up, machined, and sprayed gold. The results - the Chapel looks candle-lit, as do the choir.

He concludes “with the quality of high definition cameras getting better and better. Little ingenious touches like this contribute immensely to the overall effect.”