PSI Has The Talent

A Belfast based lighting specialist supplied all lighting equipment - including new Vari*Lite 2500 Spots - for the second year running to Ireland's high profile All Ireland Talent Show.
Produced by Tyrone Productions and Presented by Gráinne Seoige, the show was staged at Ardmore Studios south-west of Dublin and broadcast live on RTE1's Sunday night prime time for twelve weeks. With expertise from Production Services Ireland (PSI), this year the production was significantly bigger than that of 2009, once again drawing massive ratings.
Lighting Designer John Gallagher delivered a new and contemporary style of lighting, bringing imagination and fun to the shows. Merging the disciplines of live events and television production, it is not surprising that PSI and Gallagher have built up a solid working relationship over the last 5 years.
PSI's Brian Reilly commented: "John's ideas are always fresh and innovative and his shows distinctive and visually exciting."
A key creative challenge was to bring a bigger look with more depth and dimension to the expedient performance space available. This was essential for the wide camera shots to work and required a careful juxtaposition of lighting and video elements. Another was to be highly flexible in look and feel to deal with the wide variety of different performance genres onstage, and to be able to work very quickly to bring a new show together in a day.
For moving lights, PSI supplied 28 Robe ColorWash and ColorSpot 700E ATs, pulled from their extensive stock of Robe products, which were spec'd by John and positioned in the overhead rig, above the stage and audience. These provided lots of floor and audience colour washing and gobo texturing on the set and around the arena.
Seventeen V*L 2500 Spot fixtures were recessed into the floor at the back, run along the front of the stage and attached to boom arms tucked in behind two side columns of Stealth screen, with another behind the central rear opening door of the stage set.
Eight Vari*Lite 1000s on the side and front trusses handled key-lighting during the voting-off sequence onstage, along with two FOH Robert Juliat Cricket follow spots.
PSI also supplied 40 ChromaQ ColorBlocks that were used to fill the voids immediately to the sides of the stage, before the start of the audience seating.
There was a selection of white light sources dotted around, including ARRI 1, 2 and 5Ks, along with 27 Source Four profiles with assorted lenses.
For a bit of jazz, two Studio Due Space Flowers were positioned to the left and right of the stage, giving an intense white broken cross-beam effect for the bumpers to and from commercial breaks.
John used a Compulite Vector Green console for control, with Peter Jones running the moving lights off another. Peter Canning used an Avolites Diamond 4 firing a Catalyst media server, which together with the various video screen surfaces (a combination of Barco i10 and Stealth), was supplied via his Dublin based company, High Resolution Lighting. He used a combination of his own specially created content, along with graphics and logos supplied by the production.
John commented on working with PSI: "The kit, crew and attitude are all excellent and absolutely nothing is too much trouble."
The visual team was completed with Production Designer Fiona Cunningham who conceived all the scenic elements and the form and layout of the space.
Thirteen year old Chloe Coyle from Tyrone, described as having "the voice of an angel" was crowned the winner of the 2010 All Ireland Talent Show.
(BMcN/CD)