The Project
Known for their bereavement-facing sub-brand Obitus, technology company Vivedia provides cutting-edge audiovisual services that help funeral directors, venues, and officiants offer families a personal, meaningful and positive bereavement experience.
In their commitment to making funeral services as personal and immersive as possible, they recently partnered with Gedling Crematorium in Nottingham to launch the world’s first experiential funeral venue. Owned by Westerleigh Group, the crematorium integrates the latest technology, music, and visual storytelling to create a deeply personal and reflective service. 3LR Lighting was a key partner in bringing this vision to life, providing the lighting concept and design, as well as consultation services.
The Brief
The experience at Gedling Crematorium was the result of over two years of research and development work, in which Vivedia worked closely with numerous families to understand what a service needed to offer to truly resonate with them. Speaking to 3LR about what they wanted to achieve with this project, the company, whose mantra is ‘lighting by emotion’, realised that lighting could play a hugely significant role, knowing first-hand the power of light and how this can impact how a person feels and be truly emotive.
At Gedling, there are three key innovations that make their funeral service truly immersive. One is the ‘Canvas Wall’ – a dynamic back-wall projection system that transforms the chapel with visuals and customisable pictures and video content. The second is a muti-point source sound system, providing soundscapes and selected audio tracks. The third is the completely flexible lighting system and, when all three are combined, this allows families to select content and lighting colours that reflects their loved one’s personality and passions. 3LR’s role was to create a custom lighting set-up that would elevate and complement the visual and audio features and contribute to the overall immersive experience of attendees. For instance, if the video-mapped walls were showing an image of someone’s favourite countryside view, the lights then needed to accurately colour match this content – in effect making it an extension of what the attendees are seeing. Another part of the brief was ensuring that the lighting fixtures had an architectural aesthetic about them that would complement and fit in discretely with the space.
The Delivery
Knowing what was required of the lighting, the team, led by Stuart West, created a design that would fulfil the emotional and practical requirements of the space. They drew on ETC, Studio Due and LEDFlex fixtures, largely due to their achievable colour spectrum, quality of build, service support and warranty as well as their controllability; given how they are able to smoothly dim and colour change, both in the room and on camera. For the presentation lighting, ETC’s Irideon Washes were utilised, due to their elegant shape and size, high CRI and light output. For room accent colour washing and house lights, a customised version of the Studio Due SMART17 RGBWA fitting allowed 3LR to match the colour temperature and feel of the pre-existing house fittings, so it felt like it belonged in the space, whilst also having the ability to colour shift with lots of different scene settings. The LEDFlex RGBW linear was chosen to top out and wash above the video canvas wall – essentially uplighting the existing brickwork and ceiling.
When it came to lighting the Catafalque area, 3LR drew on ETC’s Navis 100 range of fittings, utilising the Chroma (RGBW) and Fade-to-Warm options. The Navis Chromas were positioned around the space, providing calibrated whites and colour washing across the whole area including the perimeter drapes. In order to accentuate and lift the coffin out of a colour wash, the Navis FTW versions allowed for a variant of colour temperature with intensity, which really helps bring out the natural tones of the wood as well as making the flowers pop.
In terms of the power and control of the space, 3LR used an ETC F-Drive R12 for powering and controlling the Irideon, Navis and LEDFlex fixtures. This was a really cost-effective solution not only because of its versatile modular output cards but also because it allowed the company to centralise everything all to one control rack, negating the need for distributed power supplies around the venue.
Following its official launch, which was attended by press, industry leaders, and representatives from the ICCM, the Cremation Society, SAIF and other key organisations, the venue’s new technology is now used daily, with over 95% of families choosing to include these new features in their services. Simon Taylor, Venue Experience Producer at Vivedia, comments: “This innovative lighting solution not only provides thematic elements where needed but also gives us the power to set the perfect scene and control the mood throughout the service. It’s been invaluable to find partners like Stuart and the 3LR team, who guided us through this journey and helped elevate our understanding with their century of experience in an industry with such rich tradition.”
Talk to the team today to find out more
