"The most important innovation here," according to LDs Riccardo Barbaglio and Massimo Cavenaghi - is the new lighting system. Last year, the Italian edition of Top of the Pops stood out for the quality of its lighting effects, which received compliments from the BBC. This is one of the reasons why Einstein, the Italian TV production studios which work with Mediaset and the BBC, decided to invest more in lighting effects.
Another reason has to do with the arrangement of the two stages on different axes: each stage had to have its own truss for both front and back lighting as well as a truss for both stages and the studio's ring. In the end, the set design was adapted to the lighting design, as in fact the set designer, Roberto Bassanini, presented his project with all the battens already included. And for the first time, the lighting system includes Clay Paky's new Alpha moving body projectors and the wall-mounted Point MH.
Barbaglio says of the Alpha fixtures: "These are innovative products for our market, with an incredibly luminous output and a host of high quality effects: Alpha Spot HPE features many different rotating and fixed gobos and an animation disc which can be combined with gobos for creative effects. The Alpha Wash has an incredible zoom and can diffuse colour perfectly at all angles, including short distance projections: this is essential when you are working in relatively small environments like this one."
The Alpha Spot HPE and Alpha Wash were positioned on battens over both stages to guarantee special effects and illuminate the public. A grid of Point MH projectors was fitted onto the right-hand wall of the studio. "The Point MH projectors were a revelation last year," continues Barbaglio. "Using just a 50W lamp, they are able to create clear-cut colour beams - this is mainly because of the halogen lamp which is filtered perfectly by the digital camera." Barbaglio added that the compact size of the Point MH units enables easy positioning in a small TV studio, and its ability to "animate" the scene were important features. "This year, we decided to create an entire wall to install a series of 20 Point MHs, which are all synchronized and 'dance' to the rhythm of the music with the sound-to-light system", he said.
The lighting system includes Stage Color 300 and Stage Light 300 in the chrome versions, Mini Scan HPE, CP Color MH and CP Color 400 e Stage Zoom 1200: a variety of products able to provide any technical solution to filming as well as giving the program that distinctive Italian style.
(Lee Baldock)
