Orion Lighting
Orion were responsible for manufacturing some pretty fantastic projection effects wheels, some are still in use today. Orion was created by Larry Wooden from a basic need to give his Band some lighting with a different vista than the obiquious liquid wheel. Larry used his photo experience in making a new flavour of wheel, the graphic wheel was born. The first ones were simple dots and stripes, and later the idea of using a mask and real slides, of Crystal Palace dinosaurs actually gave Larry a winner, and it led the way to the concept of a continuous panoramic design. All others by other lighting designers seem to follow from the original concept by Larry. Look at the wheels and thank Larry for giving us some really great effects. UPDATE!! Orion has returned. Larry is currently (OCT 2022) producing artworks again and has the ability to reproduce some of his original wheels, as well as secondary product. www.orioneffects.co.uk and there you will find current contact info/email.
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Shop Front, see wheels on display | Larry Wooden | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The wheels on this page were manufactured by Orion Lighting. All designs copyright of Larry Wooden 1967-2009. |
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Orion did not produce any 3" effects cassette. Some of the designs never made it into production, but those shown here all did. Larry did have his own website, but sadly this is no longer, so my thanks to Larry for his kind permission to reproduce the information presented on this page. |
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The Dr Who Lightshow commenced in 1968 when some lighting was made up to accompany the band D’Arcy Spice. After a short while requests came from the new DJs asking to either supply them with lights or do a lightshow for them. In practice both supply of lighting and lightshows was done. The lightshow ended when the Orion shop was opened, the equipment was then used for demonstrations. Shown left is one of the setups with the Tutor II projector among others. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Some time ago, Larry wrote an intro on the Orion story, Reproduced here a copy of the text. A Brief History of Light and Orion Lighting In the beginning, around 1968, there was darkness and bands performed in dark smoky cellars, then came the light, in the form of the liquid wheel. Developed in America from shows using clock glasses on overhead projectors, the liquid wheel has proved to be the most enduring projected effect. Unfortunately this proved a little boring for my band (D’Arcy Spice), and I then came across the Sarex Wheel, made by Colin Cadle of Andromeda Spiral Lighting in Blackheath, London. The Sarex was a mixture of glass paint and glue, and gave a very psychedelic effect. In time this also become boring, so I used my photographic experience to create some graphic design wheels consisting of dots, stripes and patterns. Now, with the film between my teeth so to speak, I made up a 35mm slide mask wheel featuring Dinosaurs in Crystal Palace. Whilst not a big success it led the way to the concept of a continuous panoramic design. A visit to the famous space artist, Dave Hardy (responsible for many of the paintings and illustrations in Sir Patrick Moore’s books), produced the original panoramic wheel, the Space Panorama. This wheel was a huge success, and soon copied by others. At the same time I had another artist draw a cartoon design, his name was Steve Maher, and the design was the Streak Wheel. It was first made in black and white, and hand coloured, but the colour printing techniques used on the Space Panorama, rapidly led to colouring the Streak master and saving hours of time! Many other designs followed, another by Dave Hardy (War of the Worlds), and most of the remainder by Steve Maher. For a change I had a few done by other artists. The Medieval, Roman Orgy and Dinosaur were painted by Maggie Gould, and the Wild West by a well known artist who used to draw a western comic strip for the newspapers. Unfortunately I can not remember his name, and I suspect he is no longer with us, as he was already retired in 1976. ** The original website is no more. However in 2022 Larry resurfaced with a great new website:- |
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