"All Eyes On London" was a lighting and visual spectacular designed by Gary Collins set around the British Airways' London Eye. The lighting scheme broke technical ground in several ways, the most ambitious being first time use of the eDMX radio DMX system which was used to stream 33 strings of DMX between the Wholehog controller and fixtures on, in and around the Eye and six 7Kw Xenon Space Cannons, located along the front edge of the pontoon. Each capsule contained a Martin MAC 2000 Wash and a MAC 2000 Profile.

Collins and Wholehog operator Phil Cole programmed from a remote position across on the North Bank of the Thames. For programming, a remote link was set up using eDMX so all 5 DMX universes could be streamed across the Thames.

Although the lighting department theoretically had five overnight periods of 'technical time' in the run up, only about 8 hours of this was practically usable for programming. Luckily, Collins scheduled in 5 days of WYSIWYG'ing at Essential - which proved invaluable.

The end client was the Greater London Authority (GLA), and the event's production managers were Chuck Crampton and Karen Towns.

The event itself was a major success for the GLA. It attracted huge international media interest and created a festive atmosphere in central London, with a 100,000 strong crowd enjoying one of London's iconic sites as never seen before.

Production Company: Live! Ltd.
Lighting Design: Gary Collins
Photographs courtesy of Louise Stickland