The event is attended by over 40,000 Scouts from 160 countries around the globe. An additional 10,000 support staff and services personnel are also on-site, involved in running the Jamboree, which features full daily programmes of entertainment taking place on one main and four 'hub' stages.
Mike Oates leads the HSL team who are working closely with Jamboree technical production manager Mike Bryan and lighting designer Andy Hook of Shock Solutions. Oates comments: "It's great to be involved in this event. It has all the infrastructure and demands of a major festival with an excellent atmosphere and lots of dedicated staff all very passionate about doing the job."
Bryan and his Technical Team are associated in some way with the Scouts and volunteer their time for the duration of the Jamboree.
The main stage is a 21m Serious Structures Space Roof - supplied by Atlantic. Andy Hook (Shock Solutions is his own lighting design/production company) took the requirement to offer a fully multi-purpose stage space as the starting point for his lighting design. He and Bryan also did the set design.
It was vital that he had enough kit in the right places to thoroughly light the stage - which features up to 170 Jamboree cast members for some shows, swelling to 300 performers at some points. They also had to light a lot of daylight shows, and so needed some seriously powerful lightsources onstage.
There's a gently curved front and back truss, a straight mid-truss and four upstage/downstage 'finger' trusses filling the mid-stage space in between, complete with a 50sq.m Masstechnik low resolution video screen at the rear.
All the moving lights are Robe - a total of 16 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200E ATs, nine ColorSpot and Wash 700E ATs and eight ColorWash 250E ATs. The latter are attached to the set's two side-stage catwalk handrails. The finger trusses are loaded up with ColorSpot and Wash 1200 fixtures and outlined with a total of 26 JTE PixelLine LED battens.
Bolted to the set are two Robe ColorSpot and Wash 700E ATs per side and a series of Howie battens. There are additional Howie battens at the footlight positions along front of stage, which are particularly useful to brighten up artists performing on the forestage area.
The front truss contains 24 PARs, a selection of Source Four profiles and four 4-cell moles, plus another four 8-cell Moles a side on the PA wings. Audience illumination is an important element of this gig, so in addition to the blinders, across the top of the PA scrims, there are three Robe ColorSpot 2500s in weatherproof domes and then a further six out in the arena attached to the delay screen structures.
Two flag lines (containing flags from each of the 160 countries represented at the Jamboree) either side of the stage are illuminated with six Robe ColorWash 1200E ATs and four 1.8K Studio Due CityColors.
A full report on the event will appear in the October issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine.(Jim Evans)
