HSL Light Up Lily Allen's 'Smile' On UK Tour

HSL supplied lighting equipment and crew for Lily Allen’s just completed UK theatre tour – featuring her largest production to date.
Lighting for the feisty British singer/songwriter, renowned for her hugely energetic live performances is designed by Neil Trenell. HSL supplied 32 of its new Robe Series 700 fixtures to the sold-out tour plus a 10 x 10 metre MainLight Industries Soft-LED back cloth and an Avolites Diamond 4 console among other elements.
Trenell was delighted when HSL won the tender to be lighting contractor.
Trenell’s basic design was based around two straight 40ft trusses – front and back – which in the ideal circumstances and sized venues, were trimmed at over 30 ft to give the stage a real sense of height, depth and space. To frame the LED backdrop, he added two vertical ladder beams flanking either side of the back truss, and onto the cross struts of these were rigged four Robe ColorWash 700s a side.
The two trusses were toned with a total of 16 i-Pix Satellite LED fixtures that contain all the intensity and light within the trusses with minimal spillage.
To create a carnival style theme he draped 14 strings of 10 and 15 metre festoons between the trusses in a random style.
Other ‘set dressing’ pieces included five strings of standard household Christmas tree lights, draped around the backline and front monitors, and several lengths of red and white (to match the album colours) rope light, wound around the drum kit and streamed over the backline, who’s technicians were extremely co-operatve in the face of having their world invaded by lighting!
Four mirror balls were rigged across the front and back trusses – requested by Allen herself - and five 4-cell Moles resided on the front truss for audience illumination.
HSL also supplied two Robert Juliat Korrigan followspots, two compressed air confetti cannons and hazers.
The moving lights were all Robe 700 AT series – 22 ColorSpots and 10 ColorWashes. The back truss was a mixture of alternating Spots and Washes, with more spots positioned on the floor, while there were just spots placed on the front truss, fulfilling several roles including doing gobo work on the band, key lighting and for swinging out into the crowd.
For control he chose the Avolites Diamond 4 Elite – always his console of choice. He also used this to trigger his own Hippotizer digital media server running all the content for the LED backdrop.
There were no production rehearsals, just a pre-rigging day, but he was able to do some pre-programming at HSL on his laptop running the Avolites D4 Pilot desk simulator.
(DS/SP)