ELP crew triumph in adversity at South Africa World Cup
While England’s footballers were letting down the nation at this summer’s South Africa World Cup, ELP’s lighting ‘team’ were trouble ‘shooting’ their way to national media recognition by helping ITV and other international broadcasters avoid ‘scoring’ a huge ‘own goal’ (Ok, enough with the lame footy analogies! ED)
ELP had the job of lighting ITV’s commentary studio at the Soccer City stadium complex in Johannesburg during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. But when Chris ‘Peanut’ Rand (Gaffer) and Tim Shotter (desk op/lighting tech) arrived on site, the studio was supposed to be ready for them to hang lights, but it wasn't. So the Gaffer arranged truss locally to finish off the studio before lights were hung as per LD Stuart Gain's design.
The moment the lights were hung a new problem became apparent. The huge glass studio windows were letting in too much light for shooting during the daytime. The ELP boys solved this problem by purpose building a double black net for the whole window. All sorted now. Or so they thought.
The Soccer City stadium itself was supposed to be lit at night so that, even when there wasn't a match on, viewers could admire its beauty in the background when the sun went down. But before the first transmission it became clear that the local authorities were not playing ball and the stadium was in virtual darkness. This was a problem for all the world’s broadcasters. Not just ITV.
So Chris and Tim took it upon themselves to source some lighting locally and rigged it for the benefit of the whole broadcast community. The end result was brilliant, all the studios benefited from the new lighting.
The episode was reported in an article written in the The Sun by Adrian Childs which praised Peanut for his timely intervention. You can read the Sun article here.
After such heroics it’s a bit of an anti climax to talk about equipment lists. But for those of you so disposed the ELP gear on this job was a mix of daylight and tungsten fixtures to allow for a combination of daytime and night time shooting including Arri 650W fresnels, 1k fresnels and Arri 1.2k MSRs.
The set designed by Paul Sundlow incorporated serious amounts of LED including ELP’s stock of Chromsaflood 200TC and Thomas Pixel Pars.
Peanut for England manager anyone?