First Robe Footsies in US debut on CMA Fest
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The four-day festival is hosted by the Country Music Association (CMA) and recorded at the Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee, in front of live audiences and broadcast on ABC a couple of months later, but this year the popular airing date was brought forward from its traditional August slot to 19 July.
Mike has lit the star-studded multi-camera event for the last 21 years. Being a massive televisual event as well as four days of live music for fans there in the venue, key lighting is critical to everything.
Thirty Footsie luminaires were positioned in a line along the front of stage, giving Mike a stylish, clean, and solid strip of footlight illumination in the perfect place.
Mike used the inbuilt Footsie diffuser and commented: “They looked beautiful, very smooth, and worked perfectly for eliminating face shadows.”
As the Footsie has an integral cable tray, all cabling was concealed resulting in a flat, streamlined look onstage emitting a smooth, high-quality output and impressing camera director Alan Carter and stage manager Cindy Sinclair as well.
“I had every confidence the fixture was exactly what we needed - and they worked precisely as I envisioned! Perfect job done,” said Mike.
Mike’s Footsie journey began a few months back at the Robe factory in the Czech Republic, when he saw late-stage prototypes of the product that was launched at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt.
He loved the idea so much that he specified them for the CMA Fest and the units arrived at Fuse via Robe North America just in time for their high profile live and TV debut.
The CMA Fest Footsie luminaires certainly had their waterproofness tested during the festival as the weather on the final night was seriously soggy. “They took a lot of direct rain, we left them out there and they just worked flawlessly,” recalled Mike.
Another advance for multi-camera environments is that pedestals in the pit, hand-helds and Steadicams onstage can shoot right over the low-profile Footsie luminaires, making no impact on sightlines. “It’s just a brilliant, inspired and highly practical fixture,” enthused Mike.
He worked alongside a talented FOH team including lead brogrammer Mark Butts, and Andre Petrus who took care of the key and audience lighting. They collaborated closely with television lighting director Mark Carver and gaffer Cole Kiracofe to produce a dynamic live experience for country music fans in the stadium and watching on TV.
