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THE TRUE STORY OF THE ULTRAMARINE LIGHTSHOW, DULWICH COLLEGE, 1966-69
really a practical proposition. However, without realising it, we had built a company of up to six projectionists, plus girlfriends and drivers. The downside was that I was too busy to pass my A levels the first time. But it turned out to be for the best. John Johnson, Careers Master, discovered that the Southbank Polytechnic, now University, had a very good Electrical Engineering degree programme, with a lighting specialisation. My experience walked me in, but I did retake my A levels –Physics, Chemistry and two Maths A levels – quantity not quality. So, the Lightshow did not spoil my education, in fact, it helped. What happened afterwards? I, Tim Seaman (62-70), got an Electrical Engineering and Lighting degree, after which I was hired by Thorn Lighting, the inventors of the Q-File, the first computerised control system for TV and Theatre Lighting. As a Project Manager I travelled the world, designing, and installing systems for television, theatre and concert halls. I designed the special effects (flashing light controls) for the original MGM Hotel (then Bally’s, now The Horseshoe) and the Desert Inn (rebuilt as the Wynn) in Las Vegas. I left the lighting industry in 1981 and got a postgraduate business qualification… but that is another story. Where are they now? Richard Callan joined the BBC and remains a good friend. Paul Davies, and I believe Phil Vernon, became architects, but all contact is now lost. Gus Thompson joined the Supertramp roadcrew. After retiring from business, I continue to travel the world as a photographer, restoring old photographs and doing some
the environment and to match the music of the band as necessary. We worked harder on certain bands than others, developing a series of light sets to match the likely music. Lighting to fit the music of the band was imperative. The Ultramarine Lightshow did not just switch on and let it go. When the band came on, the focus changed. Our band list includes: Aardvark, Atomic Rooster, Blonde on Blonde, Brinsley Schwarz, Caravan, Curved Air, David Bowie, East of Eden, Fanny, Gloria Gaynor, Groundhogs, High Tide, Incredible String Band, John Hiseman’s Colosseum, Juicy Lucy, Killing Floor, Matthews Southern Comfort, Mott the Hoople, Pink Floyd, Random Hold, Steamhammer, Stoneground, Swinging Blue Jeans, T Rex, Uriah Heap, Van Der Graf Generator, Yes. We were also regularly booked for high society balls and parties to create a psychedelic environment. This included several Master’s soirées. For our bigger shows, we were carrying 12-16 slide projectors, two overhead projectors, occasionally movie projectors and a stage rig containing band lights, strobes, UV floods and side spots. So, what happened next? We were asked by two of the bigger bands listed to become their permanent lighting team, invited by other bands to Middle Earth in Covent Garden and the Roundhouse, and recommended to replace the incumbent lightshows. However, we were schoolboys and clearly looked it, unable to make that leap. Ultimately, we were booked to light The Who at Nottingham University but were cancelled because they were carrying their own lights. Time was up. What separated us from the pack was the variety of psychedelic effects that we had developed in the Chemistry Labs, the vast equipment support we got from the College at the time. Thinking back, two overnighters each weekend at the Roundhouse, in term time, using school equipment was not
At this stage, a very large acknowledgement must be given to Dulwich College for their encouragement, loan of equipment (a vast resource), Mr Jones, without whom we would never have got as far as we did, the use of the Chemistry Lab after hours (thanks, Mr Facer, an explosives expert in a former life), the Photography Lab, and the Technology Department for the resources to make the ‘machines’. Barry Adalian, our Art Master, designed many of the title slides for us, featuring the names of the bands. With the assistance in the Chemistry Lab, several of our liquid effects were reaction driven, which was one of the things that differentiated us from the rest, who almost exclusively used heat to create bubbles in the liquids – we were using ‘liquid wheels’ before they became commercialised. The look was far from school boyish from the start. I took the advice ‘if you want to be good, copy the best and develop your own platform from there’. So, I watched Pink Floyd as their show developed, Mark Boyle with the Soft Machine, the lighting of Zoot Money’s Dantalian’s Chariot (a bit of a one trick pony) and Eric Burden after the Animals for the use of strobes. I had tickets two to six for both nights of The Doors and Jefferson Airplane at the Roundhouse accompanied by Glen MacKay’s Headlights from San Francisco, and later Joshua /Joe’s Lights from New York, when they came over with the Chambers Brothers at the ICA. I was also inspired by Pop Artists Bridget Riley, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, and the end sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey . London had a Cinerama cinema, and if you sat in the first rows you got total immersion, which we tried to achieve with our lightshows. Very quickly we worked out that there was a dichotomy between lighting the hall and putting on a show with the band. We always carried our own stage lights to light the band, which they liked. The big difference between then and now was power. None of the halls were that big, and yesterday’s standards of relatively low powered stage lights were adequate for the individual members of the band to be illuminated effectively. Working with bands is not so easy to define. Pretty much without exception we were booked in our own right to create
It was December 12, 1966. I was in form 4B and a Scout, but not one of the College Scouts. This was a night out for the Senior Scouts to see ‘You’re Joking’, a review at the Royal Albert Hall supporting Oxfam featuring several TV stars of the time. I was 15 years old. The start of the second half changed everything. Darkness fell followed by very loud, unfamiliar music and projected lights onto a screen. This was Pink Floyd – amazing. There were many school bands in their infancy at the time, starting to flourish, but my interest was in the lighting. I thought ‘I should be able to do that’ and set about building something and developing a range of liquid light techniques and lightboxes as soon as I got back to school. Initially with David Price (61-69), who bought our first big projector, I set about creating a liquid lightshow to rival what I had seen. Quite soon we were lighting school and local concerts featuring Pooh and the Ostrich Feather, containing luminaries of the future rock industry. After a trip to San Francisco, David dropped out of the show to do his own thing, and I was joined by Richard Callan, an old friend from Wilson’s Grammar, who later designed and built our stage light ‘organ’, and others, who at that time were a rival show (Paul Davies, Phil Vernon from Alleyn’s, and Gus Thompson) who had the equipment but not the technique. Electronics geniuses Lawrie Ball (63-69) and Adrian Segar (61-69) started to make electronics to control the stage rig from scrap telephone equipment, but we needed to get bigger. The Ultramarine Lightshow was born. The show started as Mollweide’s Homographic Projection, inspired by a map in the Geography classroom. A Mollweide projection is an equal-area pseudo cylindrical map projection displaying the world in the form of an ellipse. It is also known as a Babinet, elliptical, homolographic, or homolographic projection. In other words, it’s the way you see maps of the world when laid flat. Clearly too much of a mouthful. When David Price left, we dropped the name for codename Ultramarine (Super Seaman) and the name stayed with us until the end.
professional cooking. Tim Seaman (62-70)
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