Renegade Designs Lighting for BAFTAS Aftershow

The lighting and visual design firm Renegade once again lit the star-studded 2011 Orange BAFTA (British Academy of Film and TV Arts) Awards gala dinner and after-show party at London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

The event which followed the awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House, utilized multiple spaces in the venue, including the Great Room, the Ballroom, and reception and peripheral areas.

It is the third year that Renegade's Nick Gray has been involved in designing the high profile showbiz event, working for production company AD Events. The challenge was to take some of the classic lighting elements from last year's scheme and integrate them with a new look and feel for the Great Room and other spaces.

Chris Fyfe was Renegade's technical project manager, leading a crew of five, and overseeing the get-in and rigging of all the production lighting equipment, which was supplied by White Light. Specialist interior fixtures came from Shok London.

The Great Room hosted the dinner for over 1,000 guests, for which Gray created a breakup effect around the room utilizing 20 B<>ETC Source Four profiles, with an additional 20 Source Fours on some tables.

He also used the Grosvenor's house lighting rig consisting of 28 Philips Vari*Lite VL2000 Washes and eight VL2500 spots to help set the scene, augmented with an additional eight VL3000 Spots from White Light. One hundred and twenty wireless battery-powered GDS Lightware LED wireless up-lighters were positioned around the room, illuminating the walls and other features.

For control, an Avolites Pearl 2004 desk was used, operated by Matthew Rimmer.

Some of the table centers were between 6-8' foot tall and sculpted into themes inspired by the film Inception. These marked a departure from the more classic floral concepts, and required the lighting to be more geometric to reflect the table design. The tables were also lit with complementary colors so shadows and reflections could be created in the mirror elements of the sculptures.

On arrival, guests initially entered the drinks reception held in the upper area of the Great Room, before progressing through to the lower area for dinner. Around11:30 p.m., they were encouraged to proceed into the ballroom, where a DJ kicked in and the real after-show party began. As part of the entertainment, they enjoyed a live performance by '80s alternative pop band Squeeze. This area was sponsored by private members club SoHo House.

The Ballroom stage measured 32' wide x 24' deep and was positioned at one end of the room. Onstage, lights were rigged onto four sections of upright trussing at the back, two at 8' high and two at 10' high. On each truss tower was a Martin Professional MAC 700 Profile moving light, an Atomic strobe, two Mac 101 LED washes and two 4-lite blinders.

Onstage were another two Mac 700 Profiles, located left and right of stage, with another two downstage left and right, plus six PAR 56 chrome floor cans. Five ETC Source Four Juniors were rigged on one of the house's overhead scaff bars.

Above the dance floor in front of the stage, the Renegade team took advantage of a square configuration of barrel bars, hanging a Mac 700 Spot in each corner. At the back of the room, the bar area was highlighted with two Source Four PARnels and 10 house PAR cans on another house bar. The whole room was draped and lit using kitsch style stand lamps provided by SoHo House.

All lighting was controlled via a High End Systems Hog iPC console. Squeeze's lighting designer, Daniel Bocking, operated lights for their set, and the rest of the time the desk/front of house was run for Renegade by Trent O'Connor.

Shok London supplied 84 LED up-lighters and 18 stylish Tom Dixon chrome up-lighters for soft lighting around in peripheral areas, which included four break-out rooms each lit with a combination of LED and PAR 56 uplighters.

The bar outside the Ballroom featured another 12 Tom Dixon uplighters, with eight Stem Spots used to accentuate the bar areas, and Source Four Parnels picked out the branding and dashboards.

A corridor linking the Ballroom and Great Room was lit with more LED up-lighters matched to the light blue corporate colors of Grey Goose vodka, one of the main sponsors.

The load in was tight, starting at 9am Saturday for the Sunday evening party. Having additional cherry pickers on hand this year speeded up the rigging process considerably, and everything was ready and focused before 8 p.m. that day, leaving the floor space clear for the tables to be laid out.

Nick Gray comments, "It was brilliant to be involved with such a high profile event again. Our brief was to produce an elegant, eye-catching vibe and ambience for the spaces and the occasion, for which we all built on our previous experiences and added lots of new ideas".