I just got a press release from Anne over at PRG about the Country Music Television Music Awards show, and Allen Branton’s lighting design for the show – using my current favorite fixture, the BAD BOY from PRG. Check out the press release:
PRG’s Bad Boy goes country on the CMT Music Awards
New Windsor, NY-June 29, 2009-When viewers tuned into this year’s CMT Music Awards, televised live on June 16th from the Sommet Center in Nashville, they were treated to more than thank you speeches and some of the hottest acts in country music. Production Designer Anne Brahic and Lighting Designer Allen Branton, whose team also handled the video content, provided a video and lighting driven alternative to traditional scenery while embracing the idea of negative space. Branton turned to the PRG Bad BoyTM luminaire for strong beam effects and to delineate the performers in this unique visual environment.
Branton had previously used the Bad Boys in his design for the MTV Movie Awards. There they played the role of Hollywood searchlights on the glamorous film-inspired set. “The Bad Boys worked really nicely on the MTV awards because of their smaller size but great intensity,” said Branton. “We used five of them on the floor to emulate movie premiere searchlights. They needed to be in scale with the set and there aren’t many smaller lights that have enough intensity to do that job.”
For the CMT Music Awards, Branton worked closely with Brahic on the ‘no set’ design consisting of video tile ribbons and a visual forest of Versa® Tubes floating in dark space. “We really tried to place the lights in a very surgical, restrained manner so as not to have the lighting and the video elements in competition with each other,” noted Branton. “The Bad Boys were a great tool because they had enough brightness to compete with the video even in vivid colors. We only needed three fixtures as backlight to define the performers against the video background.”
Felix Peralta, Lighting Director/Programmer for the CMT awards, agreed, saying, “They provided a big, hard-edge light that could cut through the video. Allen and I really like the 8″ aperture of the Bad Boy, it is a nice fat beam that comes out of the light; the output is tremendous. It really provides what Allen likes to call the ‘shock and awe’.”
PRG also provided the large quantity of VersaTubes, a primary feature of the design, along with five Mbox ExtremeTM media servers, which were programmed by Jason Rudolph. Rudolph used two servers for the Versa Tubes and three for the XL Video F-LED video tiles. “I have used the Mbox many times in the past and there are a lot of things I like about it,” said Rudolph. “The new version 3 hardware is a vast improvement. It is a good server with a lot of nice functions and it is pretty damn reliable.”
Branton, who worked closely with PRG well in advance of the event commented, “Everything came in and was ready to go, which was great because our time was limited. Everything was handled beautifully. It is really one of the most important things to me, getting people in the boat with you that you can trust and I trust PRG.”
