Popping it up for Polish Idol
- Details
Artur has been an LD for 17 years and was a renowned film and TV DoP for 10 years before that. He’s known for taking creative risks and delivering new and invigorating designs, and for this show - returning to Polish national TV prime time after a 13-year break - his mission was to ensure that the lighting and scenography worked consistently from all camera perspectives.
This approach informed every aspect of the lighting, video and scenic design, bringing a cool cinematographic ambience to the studio.
A reasonably open brief by producers Freemantle Poland meant it didn’t have to be an exact replica of anything that had gone before, and the opportunity to design both set and lighting brought a slick, streamlined default visual harmony to Studio 1600 of the Polsat complex in Warsaw.
“It’s a big space, and so I wanted a multi-layered set but with lots of transparent elements that could be through-lit. I definitely didn’t want any solid walls,” he explained.
The headroom at 9.5m was relatively low so a spherical and curved layout was adopted to maximise the space. Artur examined this from all camera angles. He anticipated their moves, their static positions, their viewing angles and elements like Steadicam paths - so that director Konrad Smuga would be able to get all the shots he needed from every angle.
Eighty-two of the Spikies were positioned on ladders either side of the oval shaped upstage LED screen, effectively forming a wall which could be twinkling one minute, full of solid razor-sharp beams or bursting with flower effects the next. The other 14 were stationed around the back of the stage.
The Idol series’ lighting equipment was supplied by ATM, a leading Polish rental company and the first one to invest in Robe’s Spikie, which was launched last year.
LEDWashes have been well established for some time in the Poland market by Robe’s highly active distributor Prolight, and now all the major rental houses have a stock of LEDWash 800s, and they are universally popular for TV and stage shows.
Artur worked alongside a talented FOH team for the Polish Idol project, including assistant LD Michal Wlodkowski; moving light and main console operator Robert Iwanski; white light, LED tape, moving prop programmer and pyro firer Michal Dobek. He commissioned Piotr Szablinski to produce bespoke playback video which was stored on a d3 media server operated by Marcin Staszewski.
(Jim Evans)
