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Happy 60th Birthday Miss World!
Best Wishes, Stuart Gain & ELP x

This year, the Miss World competition returned home to London to celebrate its 60th Birthday. A record breaking 120 nations competed for the most coveted crown in beauty. The finals were broadcast live from Earls Court on Sunday 6th November 2011.

Although its profile is a lot lower in the UK these days, Miss World is still the world's most watched annual TV event. Over one billion viewers tune-in across 168 countries.

"This is the fourth time I've lit the show" says Lighting Director Stuart Gain. "Once before in Poland and twice in China. So I was delighted to be asked back again by The Miss World Organisation for this special 60th birthday pageant"

He continues "Because I have a close working relationship with The Organisation, and a long history with Head of Production David Morgan, they gave me a fairly open brief regarding the lighting design, obviously working to a specified budget. So one of the first calls I made was to John Singer at ELP to help put together an equipment list that would be big enough to fill the massive Earls Court space and flexible enough to provide a combination of studio lighting for the girls on sage and event lighting for the various music and dance acts which were also part of the show"

At least 80% of this Finals show focused directly on the girls walking across the stage, being interviewed and viewing their results on the big screen, so key lighting for them was a priority for Stuart. He used standard TV lighting techniques with an assortment of ELP fresnels. There were five 10Ks and twenty-one 5Ks to illuminate the entire stage set.

For the panning camera shots across the stage and audience Stuart had moving lights and LEDs to provide the wow factor. There were various music and entertainment acts during the show. For example, dance troop 'Diversity' and pop band 'Blue' were amongst the performers so the moving lights were a necessary part of the overall rig.

"The ELP lights which really stood out for me in terms of their performance on this show were the Clay Paky Alpha Beam 700s for their impressive brightness, punch and speed… And the Martin Mac 301s for their versatility." Comments Stuart.

Stuart used the Mac 301s as up lighters to illuminate the on-stage structures known as 'skylons'. These structures, designed by set designer Simon Kimmel, were a key feature of the overall look of the event. The rest of the set included a large video screen and four separate entrance walkways for the girls to glide on and off stage.

The top of the set and the stage floor were decorated with Martin Mac 2000E Wash lights. While Martin Mac 600s and 500s were used for audience effects.

A graduated lighting effect on the stage set was achieved by using fifty of ELP's Thomas Pixel Line LED fixtures. These were placed at the base of the set (some double banked) to produce a skimming light effect up against the translucent white fabric of the set. It was a cost effective way to produce a stunning result.

Finally, twenty six Clay Paky Alphaspot HPE 1500s were placed on the back and side trusses interspersed with a dozen Martin Mac 700 spots.

"The original plan was to use smaller lengths of truss on different levels to create a more layered effect" confessed Stuart. "But due to the way the venue charges for extra rigging points we had to reduce the number of trusses so that the production budget was kept on track. But an unexpected surprise was the effect produced by the sodium house lights to the back of the stage set. They provided a star cloth style background above the rig which worked really well on camera. These would normally be shut out by the venue but they were very helpful and worked with us to fix a few of the missing bulbs and keep the lights turned on. This provided an added visual layer for free!"

Stuart's lighting design would have been perfectly at home in a TV studio and the ELP crew, headed up by Andy Stacey, effectively brought a large TV studio lighting rig into an events venue so that the LD could have a significant amount of creative flexibility and lighting control.

Richard Bowles was Stuart's board operator and he used a Grand MA desk on this show because of its very good networking, its ability to be pre-programmed off line, and the fact that it can handle multiple cues very well (of which there were vast amount on this show).

"This is the first time that Richard and I have worked on a TV show together" remarked Stuart. "But we've worked together on several theatre productions before and I've always been impressed with the speed Richard works at. Having seen him set 130 cues in under 3 hours before, I knew he was the right man for this job"

With 120 girls on stage, most without any previous TV experience, plus all the obvious language barriers, rehearsals were often lengthy. But practice makes perfect and after a week in Earls Court everyone was ready for the big day. ELP provided a highly experienced running crew for the whole rehearsal week to support Stuart which consisted of Andy Stacey, Gareth Crockford, Paul Tibbles and Richard Shout. Dave Scrivens provided the spot team.

"I can't thank the team enough" says the LD. "They kept things ticking over very smoothly and we delivered a show that was befitting of this special 60th birthday celebration event."