Denmark - Litecom has made a major investment in new Robe moving lights. The company is based in Copenhagen and has a branch in Stockholm, Sweden and works extensively across the two countries and throughout Scandinavia.
2024’s purchases include 50 x Forte Profile moving lights, 60 x Painte Profiles and 136 x Spiider LED wash beams, all delivered by Danish distributor, Light Partner. This was followed by a further investment of 24 more Fortes, another 50 x Paintes plus three BMFL FollowSpots.
“This decision was based on boosting our inventory with reliable stage lighting products that are universally useful across all our projects,” explained Litecom lighting designer Martin Wallin.
Wallin has been with the company for 19 years and oversees all the major broadcast projects, which have included supplying lighting to the Eurovision Song Contest four times and rigging for the 2024 event in Malmo.
This opinion on the new lighting products was echoed by project manager Andreas Christensen who added that they also wanted fixtures that were cross-rentable and in general circulation and therefore sourceable for shows requiring more units.
Before these latest Robe fixtures, Litecom had purchased large stocks of BMFLs and Pointes for both Danish and Swedish operations and the Pointes are still in active service, and before the Forte investment they had used older profile fixtures from another brand.
“We knew we needed to upgrade, and we really needed multifunctional kit,” emphasised Wallin. Shoot-outs and comparative sessions were staged in their studio, testing aspects like mid-air effects, key lighting and general features. “Forte does all this extremely well, which was a great bonus,” he said.
Wallin has designed the Danish version of X-Factor for the last few years, and his artistry and experience as a lighting designer further informed the choice of Robe moving lights.
For X-Factor, he generally needs luminaires with dynamic scope to light around 90 different songs across the seven ‘live final’ shows, making each contestant look individual and interesting.
Sometimes it’s left entirely up to him to choose the treatment, while other times he will get input from the judges as to how their mentored artists should look, and the artists themselves can also have input.
For X-Factor Denmark 2024, Wallin utilised 50 x Paintes positioned all over the stage area, 24 x Fortes for key lighting and three BMFL Follow Spots, plus other fixtures.
The Spiiders were run in mode 3 so they could additionally be used for pixel mapping effects, and having the Robes on the rig made a noticeable difference. He found himself using a lot of gobo and colour options on the artists this year, saying that transitioning from Pointe to Painte was a “super smooth” process.
X-Factor 2024 was recorded in Litecom’s own studio space, located around 500 metres from their main warehouse just outside Copenhagen.
One of the largest studios in Denmark, it is an old industrial building once used as a testing facility for undersea cables, and now busy with band and production rehearsals and other TV shows.
Wallin has worked on X-Factor since series two (2024 was number 17 and they are now on 18). His X-Factor journey started as a lighting technician, progressing up to programming and running key lights before taking over as the series’ main lighting designer. Last year, he worked with graphics and video producer Katja Forup – who created all the screen content – to present a full visual picture for each contestant. The series director was Jesper Hvenegaard.
Litecom now has around 800 moving lights available in the Copenhagen warehouse including the new Robe luminaires, and all their main fixtures above a certain size are now Robe.
Wallin is constantly in touch with Johan Kvartborg and the team at Light Partner team about what’s new in the Robe universe and highlights the importance of a good relationship with and information flow from the distributor.
