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Pixel Love on A Saturday Night
Lighting director Tom Kinnane used 55 James Thomas PixelPar 90(A) LED fixtures to light the set of ITV’s popular dating show, ‘Love on A Saturday Night’, presented by Davina McCall.
Kinnane chose the fixtures to front-light the spacey, eye-catching elliptical 3D set designed by Marcus Blee. The off-white, multi-layered set illuminated beautifully, so lighting became the show’s key effect, shifting the colour, mood and feel of the space as the action unfolds.
Kinnane started using Pixelline 1044 battens – of which there are also 10 on this show – at Christmas after seeing them in action on Granada’s ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ in Manchester. He was impressed with their power and punch, and then tested some of the new PixelPar 90 convection cooled fittings at the first opportunity. They were run in 10-channel mode for ‘Love’, ensuring full dimmer intensity control.
“They look fantastic on camera,” he declares, and likes them so much that he’ll now use them whenever he gets the chance. The next upcoming shows are a Graham Norton pilot for the BBC, and ‘Later With Jools’.
The PixelPar 90’s low profile convection cooled and weatherproof housing makes it highly practical for this type of in-set application. Other advantages include the fixture’s completely flat beam field - when used with the wide angle lens - which is devoid of hot spots, and the incredible intensity and range of colours and their lightening-quick response time. The fixtures were used constantly throughout the ‘Love On A Saturday Night’ shows.
They were controlled by moving light programmer and operator Svend Pedersen, using a WholeHog II. In the true spirit of ‘Love On A Saturday Night’, Pedersen declared: “I simply love PixelPars. The colours and intensity are just sensational. Sometimes we had to pull them back to between 15 and 30% . . . and I am generally just completely blown away with them!” He adds that being able to achieve all the traditional Par beam angles focuses from the PixelPar via a set of five lenses is also very handy, specially for creating even cross-set washes.
Tom Kinnane reckons that Pixel products will soon be used to light cycs and other large surface areas and backgrounds because of the quality of the light diffusion.
Other practical pluses of using PixelPars include the small amounts of power consumed for the huge amount of light output – always a long and short term concern whether working in the studio or on location. No heat issues is also a major advantage. This heat - or rather cool - factor is also popular with the crew, explains Kinnane, as it can add significantly to the speed and efficiency of get-outs if the units can simply be unplugged and packed away, without having to be left to cool off before being touched!
Other members of Kinnane and Pederson’s lighting team for ‘Love on A Saturday Night’ were conventional lighting console operator Dave Knott, moving light crew Chief Richard Jarvis, generic crew chief Terry Maskill and lighting electrician Peter Montalbano.
In picture: Dave Knott, Tom Kinnane, Peter Montalbano. Back Row left is Richard Jarvis, and on the right is Svend Pedersen.
2nd June 2004
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