Syon Park, which surrounds 500-year-old Syon House in Brentford, England, contains over four hundred species of tree and has been a horticultural woodland for almost 600 years. With Enchanted Woodland, a visit to Syon Park in winter has visitors seeing the arboretum in a whole new light.
Using 1000 separate light fixtures and over 15km of cable, the Yes Events installation team, headed by project manager / lighting designer Tom Chennells and lighting programmer / systems designer Adam Nicholls, utilized Elation products in a woodland lightshow, at Syon House and in a laser show.
An area of the woodland was host to a son et lumiere where lighting was timecoded to Elgar's famous Pomp and Circumstance, a feature designed to recognize the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. Elation SixPar 300IP PAR colour changers illuminated individual trees and Platinum Beams in weatherproof domes added dimension and texture with sharp beams of light catching on branches and foliage.
"The recent addition of 48 SixPar300 units to our stock has proved a great move," said Nick Ratcliffe, managing director at Yes Events Ltd. "The 6 colour chipset means they are not only a flexible high power architectural option but also a really popular choice for lighting designers wanting to wash stages or venues with colour."
At the distinctive Syon House, SixPar 300 units were deployed to uplight the feature pillars of the building while high-power Platinum Beam 15Rs were deployed in weatherproof domes on the roof. The Platinum Beams with their frost feature were used to illuminate the lion on top of Syon House and were also used as sky tracking pencil beams of light which could be seen for miles around. The light show was programmed and then recorded onto a rackmount Elation DR-Pro Rack, providing a convenient and reliable way to loop the light show.
The laser show forms the finale to the Enchanted Woodland and is a time code light and laser show with water screen which is set to music in the stunning Great Conservatory. Yes Events utilized Snipers, Rayzor Q7s and SixPar 300IP fixtures. The Elation Snipers formed a key part of the installation and were chosen due to their narrow laser-like divergence brightness and fast movement speed. The SixPars were used to illuminate four pillars immediately in the splash zone of the water screen while the Rayzors, mounted overhead, provided depth to the show.
Tom Chennells, director of production at Yes Events Ltd, stated, "The Snipers have proved a great investment for Yes Events. Their use in the Enchanted Woodland Finale was breathtaking. It's worth mentioning over a 4 week period that the Snipers didn't miss a beat with not a single fault or swap out in a very demanding environment."
(Jim Evans)
