Leading UK lighting and visuals rental specialist HSL supplied equipment for a bold, vibrant interactive lighting installation work - Control tforce created by Lighting Designer James Bawn, that illuminated the 330 metre high Emley Moor Mast in west Yorkshire UK, which is the tallest freestanding structure in the UK, an iconic local landmark and the main UHF transmitter for most of the county.
Specially commissioned by TG Events on behalf of Kirklees Council as part of Hypervelocity, the 5-day grand final of the 100-day 2014 Yorkshire Festival, the Control tforce project which ran over two evenings, also celebrated the start of the 2014 Tour de France cycle race in Yorkshire.
James has been involved in some previous architectural lighting projects for the council and when his ideas for lighting the Emley Moor broadcast transmitting station Mast (currently owned by telecommunications and broadcast transmission company Arqiva) received the green light, he immediately turned to Simon Stuart and Mike Oates at Blackburn-based HSL to provide the equipment and additional expertise.
Says Simon Stuart, We were really excited to be involved and to help James realise such a stunning and inventive idea that made history as the first time the tower has ever been fully lit and was enjoyed by so many people!
HSL supplied A&O Technology Falcon 6000 searchlights, Robe CitySkape Xtreme LED floods, Chroma-Q Color Force 48 LED battens and Clay Paky Sharpies and continued its investment in Luminex with another brand new bespoke fibre optic system especially for the project. This incorporated Luminex Gigacore 16Xt switchers and Ethernet convertors coupled with a 350 metre run of Armourflex fibre cable.
James not only produced a stunning piece of pop-up public art involving the Grade II listed structure, he made it a truly interactive experience utilising Kirklees Councils events Twitter page, creating #lightthemast.
This enabled people to request their favourite colours when the installation was live each night with James tweeting back as he changed the colours.
On the first evening, #lightthemast was the fourth most popular trending topic in the UK inciting a phenomenal reaction that also sent thousands of people flocking to the location a mile west of Emley in Kirklees to engage in the experience first-hand.
To establish the exact kit needed and its optimum location for the 360 degree illumination designed to make the tapered reinforced concrete tower shine like a giant light-sabre visible for miles around, HSL supplied some sample fixtures and helped conduct a series of site tests. After this process was complete, James finalised his lighting plot.
Seven separate Steeldeck platforms also supplied by HSL - were erected in a radius around the Mast approximately 20 metres away from the structure and each 20 metres apart. James also energised his best diplomatic skills in persuading the local farmer to embrace the project and let him locate some of the platforms on his land!
On each platform was an array of searchlights and a CitySkape Xtreme. On the floor directly in front of the platforms was another Falcon 6K and two more CitySkape Xtremes all of them firing at the tower.
Inside the Masts control room, which is 274 metres off the ground, were the ten Sharpies and the 20 Color Force 48s, arranged so light bounced off the celling and was clearly visible through all the windows. On the roof of the control room a 30 Watt RGB laser was rigged and could be seen from miles around.
These fixtures were all controlled from the production platform set up in the field below via the fibre backbone, which would have been impossible to achieve it any other way.
Says James, who also works for sales and distribution specialist A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd. in Leeds, As always it was fantastic working with HSL the service and equipment was fantastic, nothing was too much trouble, we had an excellent team who all worked extremely hard to ensure that the event was a massive success.
He also says a big thank-you to Arqiva and Tim Garbutt from TG Events for their co-operation.
The most popularly requested colour for Control tforce proved to be yellow for the leaders shirt of the Tour de France closely followed by blue and pink!
Photo by Canna Gray
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Leading UK lighting and visuals rental specialist HSL supplied equipment for a bold, vibrant interactive lighting installation work - Control tforce created by Lighting Designer James Bawn, that illuminated the 330 metre high Emley Moor Mast in west Yorkshire UK, which is the tallest freestanding structure in the UK, an iconic local landmark and the main UHF transmitter for most of the county.
