Film & TV Appearances!
This post might seem a bit off topic for a company that provides specialist illuminated road safety equipment but over the years we have supplied a large number of film and television production companies kit to provide that real life look and feel even if the film might be in a place ‘far far away’ if you get the inference!
SPACE FILM APPEARANCES
Yes you will see our traffic wands in a couple of the Stars Wars franchises, so for Star Wars fans and fans of Traffic Wands (must be some out there?) look out for the Rebel Alliance giving take off and landing instructions to their X-Wing fighters as they go off to battle the evil Empire.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, during the Battle of Scarif you see the KB26R model, there’s a bit of the usual film CGI enhancement going on there to be sure but they are mirroring the type of operations you see in the real aviation world.
Another sci-fi classic franchise is Alien and the box office hit Prometheus. There’s a couple of scenes where sharp eyed viewers (well me really meanings I posted them to Pinewood myself and had been on the lookout ever since) will spot our Knight Pod hazard lights. These LED flare lights are typically used as emergency warning beacons by the police and as vehicle breakdown LED’s, stuck on top of traffic cones they make effective LED strobe lights.
Here however you see them on a space shuttle craft where they have used them to mark out the landing ramp, which is a good user case example for these portable magnetic, robust, rechargeable warning lights. We have a few hauliers who do the something similar when shipping large loads like wind turbines and need highlight the edges of their loads – without the need for wiring looms they can high light the leading hazard edges and fix the lights magnetically or by cable ties with the Knight Pod’s fixing loops.
Another scene that we quite like is where help is called from the orbiting mother ship and a beacon is thrown to the ground and begins to flash – again excellent use of a Knight Pod and reminiscent of an infrared version we provide the military when calling in helicopter landings in hostile zones (or identifying areas where they do not want to alert anyone with a visible marker light).
The film production team have added a couple of features that are ‘non standard’ in this scene, for a start they have stuck two Knight Pod’s together that flash in unison with a central light that pops out of the middle – not a feature of the KB55 Knight Pod.
That said we have actually got a bit closer to this kind of functionality with our new KB56 Knight Pod! This sequential flashing beacon has four LED’s in the top middle section for visibility from the above (ideal for air observation) as well as several synchronised LED features that allow the Pods to flash in a variety of highly eye catching patterns – one of them in unison.
Widely used as a police warning beacon and as an LED emergency hazard light in blue they are also available as amber waning lights, red flashing hazard lights and white obstacle LED lights.
Interestingly the way in which they are depicted in this film was how the RAF were proposing to use them as they would survive drops from height and other extremely robust handling (they will withstand a typical vehicle driving over them)
TV ADVERTS
Every year Cadbury’s tend to do their Christmas themed chocolate advert and a few years back they put a big orchestrated HGV scene together, I think to the background tune of Thunderbirds? They had a team of banksmen/women (best cover all genders) moving these wagons around with our KB37 Red Traffic Wand using some recognised banksman vehicle signalling techniques, before sending them off on their Christmas stocking runs!
For cinematic purposes we are pretty sure they was a bit of enhancement going on in some of the above productions with scenes been filmed in daylight but we think you will be impressed how these battery powered devices actually perform in their intended low light environments.
POLICE REALITY SERIES
There’s a lot of reality TV shows depicting the Police (Monday night seems to be a favourite showing time) so look out for the Motorway Cops series, Cheshire Police can sometimes be seen deploying our emergency services case set of Blue Police Knight Pod’s.
One of the stars of the show is an inspector who we spoke with years ago, a keen advocate for change he trialled the Knight Pods as a more compact alternative to their existing kit with the force later adopting them as standard kit.
Another police series Night Coppers filmed in Essex will often show officers wearing a small blue personal LED light. With 3 operating modes this highly effective safety light helps make police officers more visible during the hours of darkness.
Every batch of new Essex Police officers receive a KB03 emergency services safety light, they have a Klickfast dock so the lights can be fitted to any female Klickfast docking point, a reduced price model has a crocodile style clip as seen if you follow this link
There’s more instances of film and TV appearances, a lot of music video’s too but I will leave you with one final fleeting glimpse of our future King – Prince William back in his flying days as an Air Ambulance Pilot.
In a documentary I believe celebrating his grandmother Queen Elizabeth’s reign, you see him handling a case set of Green Knight Pods in his helicopter when doing a kit check. You have to be quick to spot it but yes all those air ambulances were kitted out with a set of these and a colleague proudly boasts ‘I posted that to the future King’….