Strictly Come Dancing has just concluded its 8th spectacularly successful season on
our local screens.
Broadcast on SABC 3 and produced by Rapid Blue, South Africa’s leading
independent production company, this international format, is produced in nearly 50
countries around the world and sets the ballroom floor alight every week with a
sparkling display of dancing and lighting.
The series was lit by Gearhouse’s Robert Grobler primarily using a selection of Robe
moving and static LED lightsources – nearly 150 in total – all supplied, together with
other lighting and rigging elements by Gearhouse South Africa. Strictly SA was
recorded at SABC’s Renaissance Centre in Auckland Park, Johannesburg.
Grobler was extremely keen to continue using mostly LED fixtures, a path he took
when lighting the show the previous year. He was given a free rein to create
appropriate lighting by the producers based on certain givens, like the fact that the
dancers needed to stand out at all stages of the competition and their impressive
array of eye-catching costumes should also be prominent in the visual picture.
Taking that and Michael Gill’s set design into account, he crafted the look and feel
for each episode and within that, each of the individual dance sequences
thoughtfully, utilising 24 x Robe DLX spots, 24 x DLF washes and 27 x Pointes for
moving lights, together with 48 x Robe LEDForce 18 PARs and 16 x CitySkape 48
LED floods for base illumination.
The studio is an empty warehouse space into which all the production infrastructure
had to be installed. Gearhouse South Africa constructed and flew a mother-grid and
sub-hung a network of production trussing on 60 points, which facilitated all the
drapes and masking needed to make the space workable for Strictly, the flying of
some set pieces as well as providing the lighting positions.
Eight DLXs lit, coloured and textured the famous Strictly upstage set arches, with
the band positioned behind, while the rest were deployed as floor specials. For the
elimination rounds, these floor based units also provided dramatic back-lighting on
the dancers.
The Pointes were positioned behind the audience seating for effects across the
audience and on the floor behind the judges, mainly to act as fillers from these
different angles when cutting to reverse shots from two specific cameras. There
were also a few scattered across the floor of the main stage and the rest around
the set arch for fluff, eye-candy and some general beam-work behind the
performers.
The LEDForce 18 PARs were dotted liberally all around the stage and set, ultimately
useful for multiple tasks including – with their beam flattening – as a general profile
source.
Grobler used a grandMA2 console for control, and his main challenge was in
comprehensively and effectively lighting the big production numbers, intricately
choreographed by various choreographers for each of the 10 episodes which
features the full cast and used every millimetre of the dancefloor.
Using a careful balance of short throw lensed follow spots and the DLX Spots, they
were able to reduce light levels for the cameras during these, reintroducing more
colour and enhancing the richness and vibrancy of the look.
Being LED driven – apart from the Pointes and follow spots – also enabled the
lighting department to reduce its overall power requirements from the previous
series, dropping from a 450 KVA to a 200 KVA generator.
