Fourth Phase

Fourth Phase: BT lights up the Tower for Comic Relief...

BT bathed the Tower in red lights to launch Comic Relief 2003, with a little help from Grayling and Fourth Phase.

Learn how the spectacular lighting effects were achieved...

To create the impressively radiant Tower, Fourth Phase employed lighting designer Paul Cook. To produce the ideal effect, two PANI BP6 projectors were used to project the pictures, logos and telephone numbers onto the Tower, whilst ten 3kW Syncrolite searchlights panned the sky above Fitzrovia. Providing the intense red colour were 58 Brightlights, 24 Vari*Lite 5 Arcs, 24 MBI Fixtures, nine Arena Visions, eight Mac 2000s and two Lighting Strikes, all connected by 10km of cable.

“The majority of the lighting equipment is on the 5th floor, pointing upwards”, said Paul Cook. “However, as the sightline to the top of the Tower is obscured by a range of satellite dishes, more equipment was located on the 35th and 37th floors to enable the colour coverage to continue above the 35th floor.”

[Fourth Phase is a division of PRG - Production Resource Group.]

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“This is not the first time Fourth Phase has worked at the BT Tower”, said James Hall at Fourth Phase London. “Alan Thomson, our managing director, was involved with promoting the change to 0171 and 0181 numbers in 1990, and then with VE Day celebrations in 1995.”

“The biggest problem this year has been the logistics in terms of getting the equipment in position, with the tons of equipment having to share the lifts with the numerous people going about their daily working routine. For the equipment on the 5th floor there was the added complication of having to wheel the gear through galleries full of telecoms equipment and lifting it out onto the 5th floor roof terrace with chain hoists. In an ideal world we would have craned everything in but the five week time-scale didn’t allow for such luxuries!”