Robe Gear on Brazilian Edition of The Masked Singer

	The Masked Singer in Brazil

Lighting designer and director of photography Alexandre Augusto created the lighting scheme for the latest series of The Masked Singer in Brazil, with his rental company, Spectrun Design e Iluminacao, supplying the lighting equipment and production.

The fifth season of the popular music TV show was recorded at Banijay Studios in the Guarulhos area of Sao Paulo, and Augusto collaborated closely on the design side of this project with another of Brazil's leading lighting designers, Serginho Antonio. Both are keen users of Robe moving lights and LED products.

Prominent on Augusto's lighting plot were 20 TetraXs -- the first in Brazil as he also likes to be a bit of a trailblazer with new tech when possible -- which were rigged on a shaped and automated truss that moved in and out to create different architectural looks in the studio.

He used MMX WashBeams for key lighting the judges and six of Spectrun's 24 new PAINTES, which replaced bulkier spotlights from another brand as "deck candy" on the floor behind the artists, often visible in shots.

Augusto has lit The Masked Singersince it started in Brazil, but the 2024 series was the first in this specific studio.

Augusto and Antonio worked with set designer Ludmila Machado and director Marcelo Amiky to create Brazil's look for the Masked Singer franchise. Augusto, Machado, and Amiky regularly work as a creative triumvirate and have designed some of the highest-profile shows on Brazilian television.

Lighting needed to be big and poppy, fitting to a glossy-floor production with plenty of theatrical twists. Flexibility was the cornerstone of the lighting design for Augusto, who endeavours to make each series look different and, within that, each of the individual artist performances. Time is always the challenge with this show, with four weeks of recording sandwiched in between eight rehearsal sessions to produce the 12 episodes, from which one winner emerges from 16 finalists.

Positioning the TetraXs on a moving truss meant Augusto could get far more out of the fixtures. He leaned into the potential of the pixel and flower effects and the continuous pan, "This gave me so many choices -- it was really incredible," he says, adding, "It is a very special fixture."

The PAINTES -- also recently delivered by Robe's Sao Paulo-based distributor HPL -- were on the floor, set up close to the many LED screens that made up the set structural elements. Used for backlighting the artists, they were in shot much of the time, so he Augusto wanted something compact and ergonomic for the role. "PAINTE is perfect, and packs such a nice punch for its small size," he says.

He likes the PAINTES' zoom and the fact that you can go wide with them and drop in a color with no detriment to the brightness. "It is vital for the cameras that we don't suddenly lose intensity," he notes, and, apart from that, the previous units were large and not so elegant in shot!

Ten MMX WashBeams were rigged to come in from the front with three from each side to key the judges, with the framing shutters being extremely handy here as some of the fixtures were around 30m away.

Augusto worked on programming the show with operator Kelton John; they have worked together on it for two years. Taking on the director-of-photography role as well as lighting designer meant that August looked after the key lighting, while John took care of programming all the moving and effects fixtures.

Augusto has been a lighting professional since 2006 and started working at Spectrun in 2014. The company was originally founded in the 1980s, and he has been the sole director of the company since 2020, when his then-business partner retired.

Spectrun's first Robe acquisitions were MMX WashBeams and LEDWash 600s around ten years ago. The PAINTES and the TetraXs were purchased new for this Masked Singer show, and they currently have totals of 24 of each fixture, so this was a substantial investment. It was also part of Spectrun's drive, going forward, to purchase only LED fixtures.

Other recent jobs for Spectrun's PAINTES have included lighting the 21st edition of the Red Bull BC One World Final breakdancing championships staged in vibrant and beautiful Rio de Janiero, which also featured two Robe iBOLTS, and the Premio Multishow 2024 (2024 Multishow Awards) at the Riocentro venue, also in Rio de Janeiro.