MEXICO CITY—Imagen Televisión, owned by Grupo Imagen, is a national broadcast television network in Mexico that launched in October of 2016. The network provides family programming, with a focus on women. It produces general entertainment and original telenovelas, three weekday newscasts, magazine program “Sale El Sol,” and the “Adrenalina Sport Show.”
As head lighting designer for Imagen Televisión, I had to determine what lighting technology was needed for an ecological and sustainable network and the most comfortable studio environment for news, sports, economy and talk shows.
First we dropped legacy incandescent fixtures for LED lighting, meaning we needed lighting fixtures with high-end LED capabilities to provide unique looks for each program. Fluotec emerged as the choice.
INSTALLATION
Lighting starts with your own vision or concept. I approach the decision on how to light talent using the right fixtures for key, fill and back light. You need to know the capabilities of each lighting fixture. Specifically, I look for the quality of light with high CRI and TLCI indexes; I also consider the power and the “tune-ability” of the color temperature.
That’s why we chose a range of Fluotec lighting equipment to provide specific elements to the look of each program.
Fluotec gear installed in the new studio included the StudioLED and CineLight panels, VegaLux StudioLED fresnels, and ETC and ShowCo LED ellipsoidal and color pars.
Imagen Televisión installed Fluotec lights for its morning show, sports show and newscasts.SET DESIGN
Once the Fluotec lights were installed, I had to determine how to utilize the gear for the lighting design of each show. I wanted pure white light for the basic illumination of each set and to illuminate the anchors and talent; then use color lighting for ambience and backgrounds.
For “Sale el Sol,” I used the StudioLED panels and VegaLux StudioLED fresnels for high key, but the same gear provided low key for our talk show. I found the right ambiance for each show by mixing accessories, like 50-degree grids, barn doors, gel frames and soft boxes. I used the CineLight and StudioLED panels for “The Adrenalina” set as well.
Fill and base lighting is provided by the CineLight tunable panels, while the VegaLux fresnels and ShowCo color pars help separate the anchors from the back wall. Fresnel fixtures are also used for back and key lighting, and can control the VegaLux fixtures through a DMX motorized zoom in our lighting console.
There is no perfect lighting fixture; you must understand each one and use it to your advantage. I am aware of and have used many brands, but I like Fluotec, it delivers the tunable pure white light I need for my anchors and talent and it has impressive luminance power.
Manolo Toledo is the head lighting designer at Imagen TV. He can be reached atmanolotoledo@outlook.com.
For more information, please visitwww.fluotec.netor call 1-877-556-5554.
