"Our task was to light this set built in a space that was once a coffee shop, with minimal power," says Hitoshi Hoshino, the executive manager of FMT. "The space also had only 2.4m to the ceiling, so it was impossible to use incandescent lights, not only because of the power restrictions, but also the heat."
The set was built for the live morning breakfast show Mezamashi TV (Alarm Clock TV); behind the cast are windows with a view of Tokyo that creates a backlight that changes with the time and weather. The biggest challenge was balancing the natural light from the windows and the front light on the cast. Fuji TV's chief lighting designer, Atsuhiro Kobayashi, had to put a filter on the window to tone down the natural light. "After testing multiple LED fixtures, we found that the Desire Daylight with a filter gave us the best balance on camera," he says.
Sold with the help of Syncro-Rise, a dealer for Ken Production Service, FMT provided the lighting package, which included 12 Selador Desire D60 Daylight fixtures. Kobayashi also used some flat-panel LED fixtures for front light and some small HID floodlights for backlight to fill in areas that had no light from the windows, to create the total look he wanted. The Desire luminaire had the best colour balance of all the fixtures they tested and the D60 format gave them the coverage they needed.
With the low ceiling and the lights being so close to the cast, they needed fixtures that would not overheat. "When tall guests come onto the set, they have to duck under the fixtures. By using LED fixtures, we did not have to worry about people touching the fixtures and burning their fingers or scorching their hair," Hoshino adds. "We are happy with the choice we made."
(Jim Evans)
