Limited Edition Events light up Leicester Square
When two new movies The Running Man 2025 and Nuremberg announced West End premieres at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on successive days, it put pressure on production lighting company Limited Edition Events and their Creative Director, Richard Godin.
Aside from the logistical challenges of set-up and accommodating various broadcast and photographic requirements, he was further tasked with the fact that while one film was a futuristic, adrenaline fuelled action movie starring Glen Powell, the other, with Russell Crowe, was altogether bleaker and more monochromatic, requiring a completely different lighting approach.
His solution was largely to be found in GLP’s extensive LED portfolio, within the fleet of hire specialists, IPS. Thus, Limited Edition Events’ site inventory of rigging, screens, power and lighting included 27 of GLP’s new JDC Burst 1 and a pair of the mighty MAD MAXX fat beam skytrackers.
Whilst temporary staging in Leicester Square has challenges, with a 10 am delivery window minimising their set up time, Limited Edition Events are specialists in creating dazzling movie premieres down the red carpet, generally working through PR agencies. “We bring everything together for live events, and have done so for many years,” says Rich Godin.
He was also celebrating the fact that his company is a fully IP-rated kit supplier down to the last nut and bolt. “I’m glad GLP have created JDC Burst 1 with an IP65 rating,” he says, “it has really elevated it.” He is clear about the value it brings. “It’s the white chip that we like,” he says, “a 12 segment-controlled white strobe line and two RGBW LED plates which is a massive plus for us. Having more segments in a fixture gives us so many possibilities, and the cells enable us to run a lot of dynamic FX across multiple sections.”
Using the JDC Burst 1 in nine clusters of three, set horizontally at the rear of the site for The Running Man 2025, the designer knew he would need a different configuration for the following night’s premiere — a psychological thriller. It was a feat of logistics moving from horizontal lighting to the vertical plane. JDC Burst 1 were set on long structures at the back, pulsing strident reds, while Nuremberg required a more nuanced approach “with more subtle eye candy”, and the Bursts were inverted and mounted vertically. “I was able to use the tilt feature by turning them on their sides,” Godin explained. “We ran them in maximum programming mode [Mode 8 – Full Segment 48] zooming at speed, with the white plate running in one direction with the top and bottom plates in counter directions. The rich deep red plate was impressive, and the whole thing worked a treat.”
He was also delighted to learn from GLP’s Paul Fielder that IPS now had MAD MAXXes in stock. This is GLP’s LED response to the classic 7K searchlights — a skytracker with a 750mm fat beam.
“We were looking for something that was physically bold and a bit different,” he said. “I had seen MAD MAXXes at trade shows, and they are certainly an imposing element.” Once he worked out best placement, given the surrounding Christmas markets he achieved the wow factor he was hoping.
“We opted to place one at each end of the long, main viewing structure and fire them over the top of the crowd’s head in the special access area. We used the colour wheels to ripple from white to red. They looked amazing from a distance, and due to the sharp edges to each cell of the MAD MAXX, they really managed to cut through the ambient light in Leicester Square.”
Because Nuremberg is a period event, Rich Godin wanted to explore the possibility of vintage tungsten emulation in the searchlights, and he was delighted to be able to recreate traditional seesawing moves. MAD MAXX comfortably achieves the tungsten effect — a warm, yellow-orange glow, around 2,500 K to 3,200 K, using its dedicated CTO (Change To Orange) dial on the built-in variable colour temperature wheel. “So I could vary the temperature and warm the lighting up,” he said. “As for the Bursts, I used RGBW LED plates to create warm white tones and mimic the tungsten look. It made it more authentic for the period.”
Speed of an overnight turn-around was facilitated by the fact that all GLP fixtures support RDM. “We addressed everything through RDM — a remote way of addressing fixtures, power and data — which proved to be a massive time saver,” he confirmed.
Summing up, he said, “At these events, we now end up with so many types of media that the lighting has to read to — paps, special access photography, OB broadcast and other streaming media — that our [production] lighting needs to read well to camera. And it’s a compliment to GLP that it’s immediately camera friendly for media and photography alike. In fact, the GLPs were all rock solid and worked straight out of the box.
“I would certainly specify them again and and am now looking to find ways to integrate MAD MAXX into future events!”
