Robe Lights OTO Awards, Slovakia

The 2010 OTO Awards (Osobnost Televiznej Obrazovky Awards) were staged at the New National Theatre in Bratislava, celebrating the best in Slovakian television from 2010.

The event was televised live on Slovakia's main national channel, RTVS, and lit by Martin Kubanka, who used Robe moving lights at the core of his rig. Lighting, sound and AV equipment was supplied by the rental house Q-99.

Kubanka's starting point for the lighting was the circus theme suggested by Daniel Sichman's stage set, which featured an intimate performance area and was spherical shaped like a big top venue. The auditorium was also partially masked off and shaped in a semi-circular format to match.

In the roof, above the stage, a curved truss circled the main presentation space; inside this was a series of straight trusses, which gave rigging points for lighting fixtures along with high- and medium-resolution LED surfaces that framed the stage. There was also a large LED floor supplied by Q-99; the company also provided and built the other LED areas of the stage set including the steps.

Over 50 Robe fixtures were used - a mix of 14 ColorSpot 1200E ATs, 16 ColorWash 1200E ATs and 16 ColorMix 575 ATs. On the furthest downstage truss were six Robe REDBlinder 2-96 LTs, used for warming those audience members sitting in and around tables at the front of the stalls area.

The majority of the units were positioned on the overhead rig, with 4four ColorMixes onstage flanking a giant rotating scenic replica of the golden OTO Awards trophy, and also providing nice effects for the wide camera shots. Six ColorSpot 1200E ATs were positioned to the left and right of the steps at the sides of the back stalls areas, and also used for the dramatic wide-angle camera shots.

In addition to lighting the two-and-a-half-hour show for a standard TV broadcast, performances by several guest artists required more theatrical lighting, so the design also had to be dynamic and flexible enough to cater for the different aesthetics.

Onstage, Kubanka kept the lighting focused on the circular marks around the set. With the whole of the back wall made up of LED, he needed powerful lights sources to cut through, so the ColorWash and ColorSpot 1200s were suitable. The ColorWashes used on this show were fitted with special PC lenses to make them softer and more diffused, which helped with general stage washing and coverage.

The ColorMixes were also used onstage for up-lighting the set, the scenic statues and the columns. "The reliability of Robe is absolutely remarkable," states Q-99's Marek Adamik, "From a rental company perspective, this aspect has really helped contribute to our success."

Q-99 also supplied a host of generic lights, a full white light package, LED moving lights and high powered flower effects for the OTO Awards.

All lighting was controlled via a grandMA full-size console operated by Michael Schmidt. Another grandMA full size operated by Tomas Lecky controlled all the ambient video playback material for the screens, floor, and steps, along with VT play-ins for the screens, all of which was stored on an MA VPU Plus video processing unit.

The show was directed for RTVS by Katarina Durovicova. The DoP was Michal Skotnicky and the executive producer Radka Blizmakovova.