Belgian celebrity and TV host Marcel Vanthilt took his popular summer ‘pop-up’ magazine show concept to two cities this year – Roeselare and Knokke-Heist – both of which staged Hotel M for a number of weeks throughout the summer.
An elaborate Hotel M set designed by Pièce Montée was constructed as the studio facility and backdrop to the daily magazine programme broadcast on national TV channel EEN, concluding each evening with a live music performance.
Lighting for the stage area on the set comprised 35 x Robe ROBIN LEDWash 300s.
These were specified by the show’s Lighting Designer Michiel Milbou, one of Belgium’s leading TV LDs. This was the fifth edition of this show that he has lit and the third year running that LEDWashes were specified to light the band stage.
The fixtures were arranged in a 5×5 matrix in the ceiling of the band stage, which was low, so they were clearly in shot all of the time. The remaining 10 lights were on the floor.
The LEDWash 300s looked highly effective both on camera and for the live crowds that gathered each evening to see and experience the Hotel M phenomenon live-and-direct in their town.
LEDWash 300s were specifically chosen for their small size and high output.
They fitted neatly into the space and looked great on camera – both in terms of output and the actual product’s design aesthetics.
The LEDWash 300s were being supplied by PRG Belgium and looked after on site by Milbou’s regular Assistant and Associate Lighting Designer, Kristof Devriese.
Devriese explained that Robe’s ROBIN LEDWash series was also picked for its zoom and colour range, which is “perfect” for this application.
He and Milbou use Robe’s full LEDWash range – 300, 600, 800 and 1200 models – frequently in their work which spans many different types of shows and productions, according to what is needed, and the expediently sized LEDWash 300 is a real work-horse unit.
Michiel Milbou started working extensively with Robe products when the LEDWash series was launched in 2010. “It was – and continues to be – the first really good LED wash light on the market,” he confirms, “and certainly the first one that ever looked good on TV”. Now the LEDWashes are on almost every project in which they are involved.
The Hotel M set contained many windows with natural light flooding in, so the weather played a big role in how the show looked day to day, a factor that also made lighting that bit more challenging. The live broadcast was at dusk between 8 and 10 p.m. each night, when the natural light is changing texture and intensity dramatically by the minute as the sun goes down.
To get their light levels higher to compete with the daylight they also had a good quota of static white lights available, and both these and the LEDWash 300s were run via a grandMA2 control console.
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