Here’s Your Hit (photo: Jonas Vangsøe)
Denmark - Lighting designer Johnny Thinggaard Lydiksen counts himself lucky to have had a busy autumn, engaged in working on several different television productions, all of them using Robe moving lights.
This has included music show Here’s Your Hit for DR2, a flagship channel of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and two major TV Awards shows, one for radio station P3 Guld (Gold) at the Aalborg Musikkens Hus and the high-profile Crown Prince Couples Awards staged at the Værket Randers.
Directed by Dean Strange, Here’s Your Hit is staged in the charismatic Tunnel Fabrikkerne in Copenhagen's north harbour.
This facility was originally built to fabricate and engineer elements utilised in the construction of the Oresund Bridge that connects the Danish capital with the Swedish city of Malmo. It is now in the process of being redeveloped as a multifunctional space for business culture and youth projects, as well as being a testament to Copenhagen’s recent industrial history.
For the series, various visiting bands and artists get in-depth with the full process of recording and producing a hit song, accompanied by advice and commentary from industry experts. The band then played their song live in the studio to wrap up each show.
Series creator and scenographer Betina Leth imagined the industrial style pop-up studio setting of the venue, complete with shipping containers and lots of bare metal structural elements, a fantastic backdrop for which lighting took centre stage to build the drama and atmosphere.
Johnny chose 16 x Robe T1 Profiles for the key lighting, all rigged on large trussing towers with an 11m throw to the central studio space where everyone sat and gave their comments and opinions on the music being produced. To light the huge industrial hall in the background and around the sides, he used 30 x Robe Spiider LED wash beams. All the lighting equipment for the eight-show series was supplied by Nordic Rentals.
For the P3 Guld Awards, Johnny’s moving lights were 26 x Robe BMFL WashBeams, 38 x MegaPointes and eight T1 profiles, with the BMFLs utilised as the main key, front, and back lights while the MegaPointes provided the effects and razzamatazz, all chosen for their power and coolness on camera.
The T1 profiles were part of the venue’s house rig, and they worked nicely for side lighting on stage, especially for the live entertainment segments where balancing the levels and reducing light bounce for cameras in a completely white and highly reflective room was a challenge.
Johnny also had another 400 or so lights on this show, all supplied by Creative Technology and controlled from a grandMA3 console.
Jonas Vangsø was the technical light project manager, Erik Blomdahl looked after the automation and the producer was Ask Greiffenberg.
The Crown Prince Couple's Awards (Kronprinspaarets Priser) was staged with limited audience and broadcast on DR, with Johnny returning to design set and lighting for the fourth year. On Johnny’s rig were 36 x Robe MegaPointes and two BMFL Follow Spots running on two remote control RoboSpot BaseStations.
Johnny is a big fan of Robe’s RoboSpot system and has been using it for some time as a solution for when space is tight, or the show needs follow spots in difficult to access places.
Johnny concluded, “I feel incredibly grateful to have been busy with various projects as this pandemic has ripped through our industry. Thankfully, it looks like there is real light at the end of the tunnel, and that soon all our colleagues, friends, business partners, associates worldwide, will be back be working and enjoying the industry they are passionate about.”

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