White Light responded rapidly to the short notice with which Michael Jackson: The Official Exhibition at London’s O2 Arena was organised, supplying lighting equipment and a production crew to implement the lighting design by US-based full-service lighting design firm Lightswitch.
Launched to co-incide with the release of the movie This Is It and designed to celebrate the life of Michael Jackson, the exhibition features over 250 items from the archives at Jackson’s Neverland home. The exhibits cover the full extent of Jackson’s career, including awards, clothing items and even the star’s Rolls Royce.
The lighting scheme for the exhibition was designed by Lightswitch for the exhibition’s organiser, Arts and Exhibitions International, with the installation overseen by Lightswitch’s Brad Malkus working with White Light’s Project Manager, Steve Richardson. “The most challenging part of the project was the timing,” Richardson explains, “with just six weeks from initial discussions to being on site, and then with a build period of just ten days.”
To achieve everything in the tight schedule, White Light had a team of between three and eight people on site throughout the build period. With the exhibition evolving as it was set up, the lighting design inevitably had to evolve too; Richardson notes that “Brad Malkus was often beavering away in the offices upstairs trying to draft the next few areas as we were rigging the ‘completed’ sections.” The White Light team installed equipment both from White Light’s extensive rental stock (lighting control, dimming, conventional and automated fixtures) and from other suppliers. White Light also handled a number of specialist projects on-site, including re-wiring the inside of the Neverland arch, addings LEDs to the Rolls, and even restoring the robotic head seen in the Moonwalker video. With the exhibition due to travel internationally, equipment for these and other effects was purchased rather than hired, with White Light’s Sales team sourcing and supplying the equipment required at short notice.
“Working with Brad Malkus was brilliant,” Richardson notes. “With a schedule as tough as this one, it was important that we all got on and gelled quickly; as soon as Brad came on site it felt like we had been together for years. That was just what we needed with 19 hour days and lots of curveballs thrown at us. It was important that we all stuck together rather than getting bogged down with frustration; we certainly laughed our way through it!”
“The White Light crew did an excellent job for us on this project,” comments Brad Malkus of Lightswitch. “We appreciated all of their hard work and patience – I really can’t overstate how much I enjoyed working with them all, and I do hope to get a chance to work with them again in the future.”
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