Last week consisted of pulling off an awesome show, fun, and yet more pancakes. 🥞
It was great to be involved in this year’s Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular show, working alongside some great companies and individuals.
We used an array of Kvant Atom58 and Atom10 laser fixtures to provide sweeping beams and safe audience scanned effects for moments within the show.
Special thanks everyone involved.
Such a talented bunch o’peeps!
Amazing pictures taken by 📸 MrBpix, Adventure Planet and Emily Briggs ☺️
// THE FIRST DECADE //
10 years with the best person in the world!
We’ve had some incredible adventures and fun together over the last 10 years. I love you more than words can ever express, but so glad to be by your side on life’s journey.
(+Cashew!) 🐈
Thrilled to have been involved with helping pull this excellent show off recently.
LSR/CITY was really something:
Safe audience scanning, high power projectors and laser bars, all programmed by some geniuses, tightly to nanometeric precision, this show was a couple of hours of photonic exhilaration.
From our crew who nailed it onsite, to working with the talented LSR/CITY programmers, operators and everyone else involved in this production:
This was a really special one for me to be out on after a short onsite hiatus:
Thank you.
In May 2022 I had the pleasure of doing lasers for Gary Numan’s iconic Wembley show, some 41 years after he last played there; truly mind blowing!
The live recording, “A Perfect Circle” has just recently been released, and have really enjoyed watching the show back.
I’m absolutely blown away they decided to use a laser shot for the cover art of this special performance. 🤩
Gary is such an excellent chap. The first time I worked for him on a different tour, we had a quick chat and he said “I’ve never been cool enough to have lasers before”.
Respectfully, I think he’s wrong. 😆🤘
Everything laser was triggered live by the seat of our pants; it was such fun.
Many thanks again for Luke Edwards @lukelte and Dave Dupuis for getting us involved on this show.
(Group pic from the first tour, pre-COVID)
If you’d like to watch:
https://garynuman.tmstor.es/product/a-perfect-circle-live-cd
or
https://youtu.be/2ODtlkRbmeg
Last month I picked up a rather special laser:
An absolute unit of a Copper Vapour Laser.
It’s an Oxford Lasers LM35 made in 1999 and hadn’t been run for at least 8 years.
Similar models were used in the early days of the laser show industry on various Pink Floyd tours, however this exact laser had a slightly spicier history:
My unit was from the Atomic Weapons Establishment, and used in conjunction with a high speed camera to take images of fission reactions. ☢️
I picked up various widgets that I thought were needed to revive this beast (ultra-high purity neon gas, vacuum pumps, hoses, fittings, oils, and other do-da’s) and took it along to the LEM last weekend.
With the help from a bunch of the nicest and smartest laser folk I know, we tinkered and prodded this beast until it came back to life. The engineering and physics of this thing is mind blowing to me (🤓).
Briefly, a hydrogen thyratron and friends dump energy into a tube of low pressure neon gas to heat copper and vaporise it to 1400C, the copper atoms decide to lase and give off the most amazing gold and light green coloured light (511nm and 578nm).
We measured the peak power of the laser to be 120kW pulses 💥
Although I think the optical hazard is lower down the list of things to worry about, compared to the “15kV, high currents, vacuum system, water cooled, neon gas fed, oil-filled, 2.5m long, ~400kg beast” vibe it gives off.
There’s a bit more work to do on it, and I’ve a few little upgrades planned, but I’m absolutely buzzing this fascinating bit of niche tech still works, and had the best time with friends getting it to chooch again.
Many thanks to everyone who helped.
💛💚🤘
Wow! I’m honoured to have been awarded “Laser Operator of the Year” last night at the TPI awards!
Thanks to everyone who voted for me; I really appreciate your support.
As I was working abroad over the awards evening, it was slightly strange to send in a video message. Thanks Andy for grabbing this for me!
Congratulations to all the other winners and hope a great night was had by everyone there. 🥂
From the labs and straight out onto tour is: ExpansiveDiffraction™️
With Tim Fawkes, The Prodigy’s lighting designer, we created a new way to seamlessly laser map smooth continuous diffraction laser effects over video.
This enabled the UFO’s used in “Invaders Must Die” to shoot out eye safe beams and immerse the audience with this new effect over the width of the stage.
@bpmsfx
I’m not quite sure how this happened, but somehow I’ve ended up on this list + been nominated for “Laser operator of the year” alongside some other lovely people.
If you’d like to vote for anyone for this or other categories, the link is: /voting/
Last week consisted of pulling off an awesome show, fun, and pancakes.
It was great to be involved in this year’s Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular show, working alongside some great companies and individuals.
We used an array of Kvant Atom58 and BeamCUBE laser fixtures to provide sweeping beams for moments within the show.
Special thanks to all involved, to name a few:
Alton Towers // Chris Carter, Sam, Simon
Lighting Designer // Oliver Suckling
Production Manager // John Slevin of Production Box
Playback // Russel Coppock of PH Production Services Ltd
Lighting // Lights Control Rigging - LCR
Lasers // BPM SFX
Fireworks // Jubilee Fireworks Ltd
Video // PixelLux Design & Colonel Tom Touring
Audio // Major Tom Ltd
Amazing pictures taken by 📸 MrBpix and Emily Briggs ☺️
// SMOKETHRUSTER //
I repurposed an old flight sim game controller to be my new smoke machine controller for FOH.
It outputs OSC, ArtNet or sACN… ✈️
Left engine throttle is stage smokes.
Right engine throttle is FOH smokes.
Variable smoke output ranges from the selector dial below.
All fans are patched to the lever on the right.
Coming to a show near you soon 💨 💨 💨
I stumbled upon this amazing installation on top of an art gallery in Aahus, Denmark.
Called “Your Rainbow Panorama” at ARoS, Denmark.
It’s a full 360 degree walkway and the windows are filtered with the most intense colours I’ve ever experienced when the sun was shining; the photos don’t do it justice.
