War of The Worlds: Martin shines through at Cornish open air production.

Trevor Wallace was recently charged with lighting an open air production of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds, presented under license by The Hertfordshire Players.

Amongst an array of conventional fixtures were 4 x Martin MAC 700 Profiles and 4 x Atomic 3000 DMX. ‘I opted for the MAC 700 primarily for its colour temperature. I had a design concept that metal-halide sources would infiltrate tungsten sources as the Martians invaded the earth.’ comments Wallace. ‘Other winning factors were the animation potentials and the strobe capabilities’ he adds. The Atomics’ proved to be amazingly intense and showed complete programmability making plotting time as resourceful as possible. Trevor had nothing but praise for these fixtures, ‘The strobe effects had to time perfectly with the music and sound-effects and the Atomics proved very good for this. I also made use of the random strobe feature with great effect as the longevity of the fade was much preferable to the light simply cutting out.’

 With lighting equipment supplied by White Light and control from a Strand 520i, the show proved to be a great success throughout its week-long run.

And Trevor’s favorite part of the show…? ‘My favorite lighting moment was a hard edged amber spot from a MAC 700 lighting a solitary Pierot clown at the end of Brave New World. As the musical transition into Dead London occurred the colour seamlessly changed to a cool steel blue. Simple but beautiful and effective.’

 War of the Worlds ran at The Minack Theatre, Cornwall from 1st to 5th September.