The Graduates Open Day is now an established annual event, where White Light throws the doors of its Wimbledon base open to anyone contemplating a career in the technical or design sides of the entertainment industry. This year's Open day was attended by 26 students who got to experiment with the latest lighting equipment from a range of manufacturers as well as listening to a careers advice from a panel of established industry figures including David Amos, Kevin Sleep, David Harvey and Mike Le Fevre and then a 'keynote discussion' on a life in lighting from lighting designer Paul Pyant, recently returned from lighting The Woman in White in New York and Lord of the Rings in Canada.
White Light then took part in the 2006 Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference, which brings together many practitioners involved in creating successful performance spaces. White Light is now involved in many such projects through its Sales and Installation Projects teams.
The week ended with the hugely successful 2006 ABTT Show. White Light enjoyed a busy time at its new location in the Lindley Hall, showing a range of products from the manufacturers it represents in the UK. New products included the Super Korrigan, Lucy and Lutin from Robert Juliat; the Unique 2 haze machine from Look Solutions; a new discharge Washlight from Clay Paky; and the Wireless Solutions range, for which White Light has now been appointed the UK distributor. Products from Rainbow, ELC and LDDE as well as the Digital Festoon System and ShowLED starcloth were also on display.
Making their first UK appearance at ABTT were the model theatres with built-in scale-lighting from Thematics in the USA, these attracting a great deal of attention particularly from drama schools; an example of Thematics' work is now at White Light for anyone who's interested in exploring the system further. Maintaining its reputation for adopting the latest lighting technology as it becomes available, White Light also became the first in the UK to purchase products from Strand Lighting's new Palette range of consoles; three classicPalette consoles will be joining White Light's hire stock shortly.
White Light's staff were also featured in the annual ABTT Awards. Former White Light service engineer Antony Bridges, who passed away late in 2005, was posthumously awarded the ABTT Technician of the Year award, while White Light co-founder and chairman John Simpson was awarded a Fellowship of the ABTT in recognition of his lifetime contribution to the industry. "It was enormously gratifying to have Antony's work recognised by his peers," comments White Light's Bryan Raven, "while John was one of the few people in the room who knew nothing about the award, and the look on his face when he realised that it was him that was being talked about was priceless!"
Just to round off the week, White Light then held a moving light shoot-out at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio, giving lighting designers a chance to compare the latest generation of tungsten moving lights including the Vari-Lite VL500, Clay Paky Alpha Halo Wash, Martin TW1 and others in a real theatrical environment. "It was an interesting and informative afternoon for all who attended," comments Bryan Raven, "with no clear winner but each light offering different advantages and disadvantages for different projects. As always we are aiming to have the widest range of products available in our hire stock so that lighting designers can pick those that best fit their needs."
(Lee Baldock)
