The ball started rolling when Bourne Leisure's technical director Mike Godolphin visited the Robe stand at PLASA 2005 and spoke with Robe UK's Bill Jones. Jones then visited Godolphin and Minehead technical manager Dirk Peace at the group HQ in Bognor Regis, and a lighting spec was drawn up by Peace and Woodrow 'Woody' Peterkin, head of lighting at Minehead - to cover the three separate venues at each site. The installation contract went out to tender and was won by Birmingham-based sound and lighting installation specialist, Cloud One.
Minehead Centre Stage is typical of all the sites. The 2,800 capacity venue is in use seven days a week for 49 weeks of the year, with a wide variety of productions, including large in-house cast shows, visiting productions and artists of all types, comedy and cabaret acts, pantomime and children's entertainment. It also hosts conferences and corporate events which utilise all the facilities. The diversity of the event programme "gives us a chance to get very inventive with the lighting and it means we have to be able to light literally anything," says Woody.
Following the demo, they immediately ordered eight ColorSpot 1200 ATs and four ColorWash 1200 ATs - initially installed at Minehead's Centre Stage - with the other sites following in quick succession. They are run, along with the venue's conventional lighting, from a GrandMA lighting console. "They are bright, fast and have loads of nice colours and gobos," Woody declares. "I love them!"
Woody says that having the Robes has greatly expanded his lighting repertoire, and that the CMY system is exceptionally smooth and allows for subtle colour 'ripple' and other similar effects, which he uses a lot. Some of the visiting shows to Butlins also bring their own LDs for the set-up and programming, leaving the house operators to run the show. Woody reports that they have also all been suitably impressed with the new Robes.
For the Reds club venue at each site, Robe UK supplied four circular trusses, each rigged with two Color Spot 250ATs, two ColorWash 250ATs and a Dominator 1200 effect in the middle. The main Skyline tented venues are also now benefiting from Robe - with four Color Wash 1200E ATs in Minehead and six each at Bognor and Skegness.
All three entertainment venues at the Minehead resort have also been equipped with Martin Audio components. The Skyline is equipped with a stereo drop of three W8LM line array enclosures and a W8LMD down-fill flown under a WMX sub on either side of stage.
Reds has a W8LM (7° vertical) and W8LMD (20° vertical) on each of the four drops, flown around the centre stage and suspended from a lightweight flying grid. The W8LMs fire into the raised area at the rear, and the W8LMDs cover the main floor area in front of the stage, and two W3 enclosures double as stage/side-fills and peripheral coverage.
At the same time, Butlins has upgraded its speaker system management with the AudioCore engines of XTA's DP-224 (Skyline Pavilion) and DP-226 (Reds). Both Reds and Centre Stage are using Martin Audio LE400 floor monitors.
Head of sound Steve Borthwick says the improvement in the sound has been monumental - and long overdue. The Martin Audio equipment was supplied by London-based Martin Audio specialists, Capital Sound Hire.
