ELP light 'death-defying' Tower Bridge jump

Freestyle motocross star Robbie Maddison made a death-defying jump across Tower Bridge to promote the Red Bull X-Fighters events taking place this summer in London.

The stunt took place at 3am so that the bridge and nearby roads could be temporarily shut down. The 262m-long historic structure was lit and branded especially for the occasion, which saw Maddison leap from one side of the open bridge to the other.

ELP provided all the on-site lighting, rigging and power for the event.

“The lighting had several purposes” comments Lighting Director Dave Evans. First of all there was a requirement to simply light the live event. Also Channel 5 were shooting a documentary so I had to ensure that all the bridge looked good from various camera angles both on the bridge and down by the riverside below. And, perhaps most importantly, we were effectively lighting up the runway for Robbie so that he could see where he was going”

ELP supplied Dave with an assortment of Arri Fresnels including 575w, 1.2kw, 2.5kw and also a number of Silver Bullet 18kw HMI Fresnel kits.

Dave lined up the 575s on both sides of the road to create the stunt runway and then placed the more powerful 1.2Ks and 2.5Ks at the point where Robbie would be in mid flight. Dave was able to work out the rider's exact trajectory and predict the lighting angles using a 3D CAD simulation. The LD was also careful to ensure that no lights were focussed into the rider's eyeline.

Two Aurasoft 800 2.5ks provided the soft lighting and four Sachtler Battery Hand-Held kits were made available to the crew. Two ELP twinset generators (one on each side of the open bridge) provided power for the stunt site.

Interestingly, Dave Evans and the ELP team were also lighting this event for the internet viewer as ELPs marketing manager Andy Dec explains “The marketing team for sponsors Red Bull were using this stunt as part of a publicity campaign to promote their X-Fighters events. Their ‘viral’ marketing tactics deliberately focused on the power of YouTube and the internet in general to spread chatter across cyberspace. With hundreds of thousands of hits expected on YouTube alone it was important for video footage of the stunt to look as good as possible. This trend towards lighting and production staging for online broadcast is something we are seeing much more of these days”

Watch the stunt take place here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcfkKtZd8tc