Lighting up a special show

Published Monday 23 June 2008 at 17:35

Bandit Lites supplied all onstage lighting for Westlife’s recent Croke Park Stadium show in Dublin, which attracted an audience of some 85,000.

The band’s 2008 show - which celebrated ten years on the British pop scene - was designed and directed by William Baker, who also designed the set, with the lighting design created by Baz Halpin.

On tour and for Croke Park, the lighting was operated and directed by Dave Lee and the show was produced by Production North.

This year’s design saw Halpin going theatrical, with all the structures concealed apart from a centre stage ‘W’ shaped truss. Lighting fixtures were all carefully positioned on a series of angled trussing sections, some of which moved. Starting upstage, there were six moving trusses, all suspended on two points each. Running on Bandit’s own fully programmable Motor Data control system, which was operated by Rob Starksfield, each truss contained three Martin Professional MAC 2K luminaires. Two diagonally running side trusses each contained eight Martin MAC 2K Washes and two moving video screens below.

Lee operated the show using two WholeHog II consoles, one from the touring show and a slave to handle the extras, all of which were matched in to the general show looks and driven by pre-existing show cues to ensure they looked integrated.

Lee was joined by a Bandit crew which consisted of Johnny Harper, Rob Starksfield, Rick Butler, Jason Dixon and Joe Simpson.