Three productions from Truro Cathedral

The ELP Manchester team headed by Darren Fletcher recently spent ten days at Truro Cathedral. Working under the direction of LD Geoff Stafford, the crew successfully created alternative looks for a live BBC daytime broadcast of the Pentecost service and two further recordings of Songs of Praise which included special guest performances from classical music star Hayley Westenra and musicals actor Daniel Boys.

Lighting director Geoff Stafford designed a flexible rig that would be as effective for the live daytime recordings as for the evening (daylight into night) recordings. To this end, all key lamps had ¼ CTB in order to try and match any daylight from outside. Most other lamps were left open white apart from the those trained on the roof and walls. These had three different colour changes during the week to try and ensure that each show had its own distinct look.

Geoff was keen to use some led fixtures which were used at the high altar and featured prominently in the special musical items. Outside the church 3 x 4k Arrisuns and thirty floorcans were used to mimic light falling in through stained glass windows. This resulted in subtle colour effects falling onto the church architecture indoors.

“The flexible rig took only a day and a half to install, including just under 4km of socapex, this was in spite of the usual restrictions we find when working in cathedrals” comments ELP technician Sinbad. “On one day we even had to stop work allowing a wedding to take place. So we helped to blow up balloons to go on the SIS scanner that was parked outside”

For the special performances by Hayley Westenra and Daniel Boys, the ELP crew rigged extra mac700s at triphorium level and mac2000 washes with Thomas pixel pars at ground level. “This gave the church a whole new feel, compared to the ‘natural’ look it had had all week. It looked more like an opera set than a church” Comments Sinbad.

All the power was taken from ELP’s 200kw twinset generator that was manned by Colin Goodacre. The power for all the SIS trucks was also provided by the generator, Control was via 4 Avo dimmer racks, an ETC Express and a Jands hog500, operated by Sinbad.