Lighting designer was Martin Kubanka, one of the country's highest profile TV lighting designer and also LD for the last four series' of the popular programme for the independent TV channel JOJ.
Velky Hrac (known as PokerFace in the UK where it was created and presented by Ant & Dec) is based on the bluffing aspect of poker games and was recorded at Koliba Studios in Bratislava with a live audience. The series is licenced by UK-based Freemantle.
Kubanka explains that the terms of the licence contained certain lighting references which had to be followed. He took these as his starting points, but was otherwise left to his own devices, and worked closely with set designer Jaroslav Holota, DOP Vlado Durcansky and director Tomas Eibner to develop the show's visual dynamics. With what was essentially a sit-down format, much of the drama and excitement building was aided by imaginative lighting.
The set generally featured a large amount of architectural LED lighting, together with some large LED wall panels behind the presentation platform. Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 575ATs were placed all around the spherical perimeter of the audience stands and used for impacting on audience sweeps and wide camera shots from the rear of the studio.
Kubanka is a Robe fan and uses them on all his shows for, "all the usual reasons - reliability, brightness, ease of programming and the vast array of available features."
While the UK show had contained lots of white lighting, in Slovakia, they introduced more colour, an effect that was a great success. Kubanka comments that the Robe fixtures give him the option to change colours very quickly, and they are also able to make the most of the unit's strobing effect, which is one of the standard set lighting cues.
In total 32 Robe ColorSpot 575 ATs and 22 ColorMix 575 ATs were utilised on the special show - other than the LED set illumination, they provided the main effects lighting, along with some Robe LEDBlinder 196 units.
Q-99 also supplied eight ARRI 1K and six 2K fresnels, six profile spots, MDG hazers and over 250 LED tubes which were ensconced into the set, plus 60 LED PAR 36s and the show's RCF sound system.
All lighting was controlled by a GrandMA console operated by Michael Schmidt which also triggered the video content that played-back through the LED fixtures and panels.
Kubanka comments that they have worked to a much smaller budget than the UK show, and Freemantle have been really impressed with the results, "The lighting has been praised for producing maximum effect from an expediently sized rig."
(Chris Henry)
