ORLANDO, FLA.—I first met Gary Thomas, the national sales manager for Videssence, a couple of years ago while he was demonstrating his new 50 and 100 Watt LED VidnelFresnel fixturesat local television station. During his visit to this area, Gary also toured our school’s TV studio and was impressed with its size. He asked me when we would be changing over to energy-efficient LED studio lights and I explained that funding might be made available for such a project if could demonstrate that such a retrofit would have a positive effect on both student learning opportunities and facility operational cost savings.
At our next meeting, Gary drew up some plans that included an inventory of our studio lights in the three different set areas. With this inventory, we were able to work out a usage schedule in terms of electricity and air conditioning requirements, and armed with these numbers, were able to show how retrofitting the facility with more energy-efficient lighting could pay for itself in electrical energy cost savings in less than 10 years.
A WIN-WIN SOLUTION
I submitted this workup to our funding committee and they accepted the proposal. Once project funding was in place, I contacted our local lighting equipment sales representative for competitive pricing and also to compare other Videssence equipment costs with those of others offering products for this market. Videssence proved not only to have the best value, but was also a solid technological and aesthetic replacement for our studio lighting as well. Additionally, the skill and dedication provided by Gary gave us the assurance that we would have the best lighting instruments the industry had to offer.
We replaced out one and two kW quartz fixtures with Videssence’s low-wattage, cooler-running 50 and 100 Watt LED Vidnels, and switched out our one kW softlights with Videssence 100 Watt Vidfills.
The new studio lighting package proved to be a dual benefit—not only will the new system pay for itself in energy saving in just a few years; our television production students will be getting hands-on experience with this new lighting technology, which it fast becoming an industry standard.
NO NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
Our experience with Videssence products didn’t begin with this recent studio lighting makeover. Back in 1998 we installed Videssence fluorescent studio instruments to light our student news desk. Fluorescents were new technology for us back then, but these first Videssence fixtures are now 17 years old and are still seeing use in the studio. This is a long track record and the Videssence folks had stood by their products continuously during all of this time.
Our mission here at the Nicholson School of Communication is to educate students in television production and broadcast journalism. We currently have more than 500 students enrolled in the production and journalism programs, studying such topics as studio production, television lighting, directing, field production and broadcast journalism. Videssence is helping us light the way for all our students and soon to be industry professionals.
James McCully is the facility manager for the Nicholson School of Communication at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. He may be contacted atjames.mccully@ucf.edu.
For additional information, contact Videssence at 626-579-0943 or visit www.videssence.tv.
