f INTERVIEW
in profile Sarah Rushton-Read talks to Paul Smith - light magician
“I treat the human eye like a camera - I have to ensure I don’t give the magic away, so I have to understand how each trick works, what I need to hide and what I need to make so obvious that no-one sees it!”
Lighting designer Paul Smith (Smiffy), founder of Ignition Creative, has an unusually broad lighting history. Theatre, raves, arena tours, festivals, circus and magic shows, opening and closing ceremonies, live TV and broadcasts, Smithy has conjured up spectacular designs for them all. Smiffy’s propensity to seize opportunity has taken him on an eclectic journey. Career highlights include three years on the road as Ed Sheeran’s lighting director and 10 years in Dubai lighting sporting event ceremonies and high-budget weddings and parties for sheikhs. Now, with a home in the Philippines and a roster of large-scale projects under his belt, Smiffy has become the go-to master of arena magic and circus show lighting, thanks to his meticulous attention to detail and safety, combined with a powerful creative flair. As lighting designer for some of the most successful magic acts in the world, Smiffy is a crucial part of every creative team he collaborates with. “I started my lighting career in school and amateur dramatics and later cut my design teeth at my local theatre,” he says. “A friend of my father’s then introduced me to an acquaintance who ran a lighting company. I was expecting Disco Dave in his garage with a load of red, green and blue PAR bulbs, but it turned out to be Alan Thomson at Theatre Projects! He gave me a weekend job which, when I left school, evolved into to a full-time job in the warehouse. I loved it until they moved me upstairs to the rentals department. I kept disappearing to the warehouse understandably, they sacked me!” Smiffy then met Brian Leitch, founder of Siyan Lighting. Leitch put Smiffy in charge of the Scala club in Kings Cross, London, where he lit club nights and secret gigs for artists including Robbie Williams and Jarvis Cocker. “I lit many
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different types and styles of music for Brian. He took the sink-or-swim approach; if you didn’t drown on one project he’d put you on something a bit bigger. Suffice to say, he’s launched a lot of great lighting careers and I am one of the many that owe him, big time.” Just as Smiffy was nurturing his successful freelance career, the events of 11 September 2001 stopped it in its tracks. “18 months of work disappeared in three days! Clients were cancelling big projects all over the place - it was devastating. At that time, Tony Shembish was setting up Avolites Middle East and was looking for someone to train his clients. I could hardly say no.” A keen Avo’ user himself, Smiffy relocated to Abu Dhabi and then Dubai and was soon taking on a lot of freelance design work. “By the time I was 23 I was lighting an opening ceremony in a stadium with over 600 moving lights,” he recalls. “I won some huge budget shows, including a number of big production weddings. These large-scale experiences have set the foundation for everything I’ve done since.” In 2011, after 10 years in Dubai, Smiffy returned to the UK. It was here that he began working with Mark Cunniffe, “I was out on the Lord of the Dance global tour for Mark and he called and said, ‘Can you have a look at a gig for me? It’s a guy called Ed Sheeran.’ I loved it and transferred to become lighting director for Ed for three years. In that time we must have toured most of the countries in the world.” During this time, Smiffy had married and made his home in Manila in the Philippines. “I’d been touring for three years with the same artist almost full-time. My wife and I had a baby and I knew I had to stop, but as anyone who has toured for long periods will know, it can be difficult to transition from 18 straight months on the road to all the idiosyncrasies of real life.”
Nevertheless, Smiffy was soon back on the road, this time much closer to home. “Cirque Adrenaline’s LD in Hong Kong asked me to help programme a full-size arena tour. It featured some pretty dangerous acts, including trapeze acts swinging over the audience and motorbikes jumping towards each other. My design priorities are very specific on these shows; to ensure that the artists are safe and comfortable, and that the artist has a clear visual reference point. From there I can cheat levels up or down and inject some atmosphere. My role is to play with the contrast and manage shadows and brightness.” Cirque Adrenaline’s producer, Simon Painter of Works Entertainment, then asked Smiffy to design the Asian tour of The Illusionists, a show rotating around 30 magicians, with seven performing in any single show. “My approach was to combine rock and roll lighting with theatrical techniques,” says Smiffy. “I called on everything I knew about magic, did my research on each act and pre-programmed everyone before the first rehearsal.” His approach was very well received both by the producers and the magicians and Smiffy went on to design the European tour, then redesigned it again for America, before working on Illusionist: Turn of the Century, which previewed in Mexico at the Auditoria Nacional, before transferring to Broadway. He says: “There really are only eight illusions, but I prefer to see them as eight basic notes that form millions of songs, all of which are different.” “I treat the human eye like a camera,” concludes Smiffy. “I have to ensure I don’t give the magic away, so I have to understand how each trick works, what I need to hide and what I need to make so obvious that no-one sees it! I think almost entirely in pictures, which means I see a show long before I’ve designed it.” I