The latest Italian TV-based youth singing contest , Music Gate, is taking the country by storm, complete with Robe’s new ROBIN 300E Spot moving light fixtures which were spec’d onto the show by lighting designer Giulio Palaferri.
Music Gate is staged weekly at the Antoniano Theatre in Bologna, and broadcast in the prime time Saturday night slot of 6 p.m. on RAI Gulp, a popular digital channel for young people.
Giulio Palaferri and the show’s lighting operator Fabio Persia have not used Robe products before, but chose them for the show after a demonstration at the Rome warehouse of N.I.T. Service, the rental company who is supplying the fixtures for the show.
The stage has an L-shaped open plan appearance with the 20 ROBIN 300E Spots rigged on trusses at the back of the two sides of the L.
The style of lighting required for the show combines the two disciplines of theatres and TV production – lot of WOW factors to keep up with the fast moving pace, some subtleties and moodiness, with a huge diversity of looks and scenes to cover the numerous different genres of music and performance taking place onstage.
It’s also essential that no two scenes look the same or are repeated over the 2 hour show duration of each broadcast, so he needed a flexible rig with an infinite variety of creative options to keep going over 9 weeks. This was the main reason for using the new Robe ROBIN fixtures.
The original heats to select the ‘final’ show contestants were staged in the summer on a tour of 6 major Italian cities.
Each show sees 2 contestants challenging each other to produce the best performance, in the process having to demonstrate their ability to sing, dance and communicate with both audience and public. They each get a week to prepare to present themselves for the contest, complete with coaching from professional singers and dancers. The weekly winner is chosen by public vote, and the Music Gate final takes place in January 2010.
Palaferri and Persia make good use of the gobo and prism effects in the ROBINs, and the great array of colours achievable. The gobos are used for projections on the studio floor and for aerial effects which make fabulous wide-angle pictures on camera and a generally dynamic mix.
The small, neat size of the ROBIN is a great asset in fitting them in to all sorts of spaces.
Say Palaferri & Persia, “The ROBINs have been just amazing. They are very bright and have been totally reliable – absolutely a perfect fixture for this type of show”.
N.I.T. rent out several different types of moving lights, but report that Robe is fast becoming the first choice of many lighting designers and directors, so as a rental operation, they like to keep investing in the latest available technology.
Palaferri has already been so impressed with the performance of the ROBINs – and also with Robe’s REDWash fixtures – that he is using both types of lights on “Zecchino Doro”, Italy’s premier youth singing talent contest, staged in the same venue and broadcast on RAI1.
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