Robe rig plays Musiek Roulette
- Details
TV lighting specialist and rental company Blond Productions supplied all the lighting equipment, while the set was built by Dream Sets.
Ryan needed a highly adaptable lighting rig and used 72 x Robe moving lights to assist him in lighting the series, which was recorded at the Urban Brew Studios in Johannesburg.
The idea with the new aesthetics was to retain a casino vibe but offer a more streamlined and modern feel, with the studio floor featuring a striking stylised central roulette wheel and three large LED screens around the circular-shaped space.
The set was re-worked after the initial music recording phase –117 songs were recorded and filmed in a single day – into a completely different space for the competition segment recordings.
The ‘second’ studio also featured some prominent scenic elements like six columns lit with LED pixel tubes and a set of scenic piano keys winding in between the columns and the perimeter of the space.
The Blond team installed a lighting grid in the studio ceiling to facilitate the exact lighting positions that Ryan needed. The show also had an array of scenic props that would fly in and out for the different episodes so “it was a highly visual and busy environment,” commented Ryan.
He utilised six Robe MMX Spots for gobo work and for hitting the more awkward positions on set that needed lighting, with 12 x Robe Robin 600E Beams and 24 x LEDWash 300s also in the grid to produce the general washes and overall colour looks.
Twelve LEDBeam 100s were rigged on top of the three LED screens to give sharp piercing cross beams, and four Robe Tetra2 moving LED battens were also on top of the central screen, with another two up in the roof grid enabling Ryan to create bright walls and curtains of light.
Ryan used a grandMA2 light console for running moving and LED lights – also triggering the playback video including performance graphics for the artists via the grandMA VPU and the games computer feeds for the competition – and sending this to the screens, with an MA2onPC for backup.
He worked in tandem with Alastair Richards who used the MA2 onPC to control a quantity of 2K fresnel front lights and other ‘white’ generics.
