Five of these went straight out on the hugely successful Jeff Wayne War of The Worlds UK arena tour, where lighting designer Steve Nolan and his associate Ben Cracknell used them to recreate the classic Martian 'Heat Ray' effect.
Heat Rays - deadly, red, laser-like zapping weapons - were used extensively to pulverise the earth and everything on it by the Martians during their War of The Worlds invasion. Nolan was searching for a very specific lightsource to make this effect work onstage. He wanted a fat collimated beam - wider than a laser - and something that was obviously more powerful than the standard stage lighting luminaires being used across the rest of the rig.
They looked at several devices before committing to the High-Grounds after a demonstration by Lightfactor Peter Coles at which they were suitably impressed. Apart from being mega bright and having the razor-sharp saturated red beam effect needed for Heat Ray duties, the chosen fixture also had to be compact enough to fit into the body of the Martian Fighting Machine - a large scenic set piece that was suspended centre stage for the performance.
The High-Ground met all the criteria, and the sale was completed by Lightfactor's Peter Coles and PRG's James Barnfather.
In addition to the High-Ground built in to the Martian Fighting Machine, a further four fixtures were rigged onto the back truss, used for more distant Heat Ray effects across the landscape. They were also used in several other colours as well as their deadly red beam.
The fixtures proved extremely reliable throughout the tour and Nolan and Cracknell liked them so much they decided to use them on the Classical Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall which immediately followed.
The DMX-controlled Novalight High-Ground uses a 2,000W MSR light source and outputs 174,000 lumens. The moving yoke version pans 540° in 3.2 seconds and tilts 262° in 2.9 seconds, making it a very agile fixture. The unit offers five dichroic colors and white, plus shutter and strobe effects; another advantage is that there's no central black hole when the beam is opened to maximum.
(Chris Henry)
