"We shot for six days at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, covering 150 hands of poker per day," says Ferri. "In total, we shot 900 hands of poker to get six weeks of programming. Each round of 150 hands is five days of broadcast episodes. It was actually really interesting because poker is unpredictable and the stakes are high."
Ferri has been lighting poker shows for a number of years. His signature method of lighting television, using ellipsoidals mounted to the grid for all of his keylighting, is a departure from the usual use of large light balloons for poker broadcasts from casinos.
"I established my method going back to the Poker Dome Challenge in 2006 and on Million Dollar Challenge," says Ferri of his approach to keylighting, which allows him to provide a fixture-free wide shot to the camera. "I make a serious, conscious effort to hide all of the equipment. They like a really wide shot in poker that is open and clean in keeping with the aesthetic of the show. I always use ellipsoidals to keylight the players and dealer, to me it's standard, easy. All of my shows are lit that way. I'm not the only one using ellipsoidals for keylighting, but I was the first to do it in lighting poker."
The sculptural set is very open with LED panels walls angling up and away from the poker table at the centre and two large, round headers over the poker table. The producers wanted a design that was very different from other shows. "They didn't want it to look like a game show and they didn't want to be like a poker game in some club or suite," comments Ferri. "The design mandate was make it simple, clean and elegant with an Asian influence. Florian came up with this big piece of sculpture and the header was a dramatic exclamation point to it."
The walls of the set consist of angled panels of Pulsar Lighting's 2x2 ChromaPanels fed DMX for control. Ferri and Smith spent a lot of time programming different color looks onto the walls. In the negative space between the angled ChromaPanel walls, Ferri placed ETC PARnel units in between each of the panels. "The PARnel has a distinctive wave lens," notes Ferri. "The happy accident with them was the pattern in the lenses was kind of interesting. Rather than it just being a hit of light, there is actually a nice pattern in the light. We had the crew spend a lot of time getting the wave lens of the ETC PARnels lined up just right."
The lighting equipment, supplied by Palm Springs, CA-based CYM and owner Kevin Swank, also included ETC Source Four ellipsoidals, many of which were used as keylights; 10 SeaChanger Entertainment Technology's SeaChanger Tungsten Profiles to put colour onto the header; and for automated lighting, Ferri used Martin MAC 600 Wash and MAC 700 Profiles for adding colour and movement to the lighting. The lighting was controlled via an MA Lighting grandMA console, operated by lighting programmer Paul Sonnleitner. John Lotz was Gaffer for this project.
(Jim Evans)
