This one knocked me back on my heels – a really (and I mean really) impressive company doing amazing work on, quite literally, some of the world’s biggest stages.
Specialz Ltd is Keith Owen and Dave Smith and they describe their company as a ‘Production Design and Manufacturing House’. That is to say that they make lights like these for Radiohead’s 2008 world tour:
They’ve worked on sets for the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Pink, Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue and U2. They also refurbished the Black Sabbath Cross from 1981:
Acquired as a piece of Black Sabbath memorabilia by Music Superstore PMT The Black Sabbath Cross found it’s way in the Specialz Workshop for a refit. The Birmingham branch of PMT Music store plan to hang the piece, dating from 1981 tour, in the shop. However, with most of fittings missing and the fact they’d have to sell twice as many instruments to pay the electricity bill if it was rebuilt with the original light sources.
Keith Owen, Specialz Technical Director, sourced some obsolete spinnings and repopulated the piece with 60 1.5w LED clusters which only draw a total of 300w max. He then used a prismatic lens to amplify the light output.
Impressive stuff. They do art installations and all sorts too. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much they can’t do and the reports I’ve found on them elsewhere are glowing – there’s a PDF here which effusively explains their role in the Radiohead stage set.