Three new African countries embraced the massively popular singing competition
The Voice – South Africa, Angola & Nigeria – with all three series recorded at and
broadcast from Stage One, Sasani Studios, Johannesburg – and all featuring over
100 Robe moving lights prominently on their respective lighting rigs.

Johannesburg based production company Multi-Media is co-ordinating and supplying
all technical elements – including lighting, sound, video, rigging and staging – for
broadcaster AMPN (African Media & Productions Network) TV over an 11 month
period which ends in July 2016.

Multi-Media’s technical project manager, Chris de Lancey put together the team who
are making it rock which includes lighting designer Joshua Cutts, asked on-board for
his experience and flair in lighting live music TV shows as well as his reputation for
innovation. Dewet Meyer won the set design after a four-way pitch.

Once the set design was signed off, Cutts – a regular Robe user and LD for SA Idols
for the last six years – started on the lighting. While the pressure was on the whole
production team to make a big impact with the three new Voices, the budget, while
tight as always, was not unreasonable.

The set needed lighting from all angles for the 16-camera shoot and the 450 live
audience who are seated around 270 degrees of the space. The set contains a lot of
12.5 mm LED panels, so in terms of lighting, beams were important right from the
start to cut through the ambience of the scenic video as well as for the show format
which ideally lends itself to being beamy.

Cutts also wanted a lighting “backdrop’ at the stage end that could be pixel mapped,
so a grid arrangement includes 12 x Robe CycFX 8s and 24 x LEDBeam 100s
together with LED panels and battens.

To ensure the entire set can change colour and be dynamically outlined and
highlighted in an instant, around 2 kilometres of LED tape was installed all over it
by DWR (also Robe’s SA distributor).

Forty-eight Robe LEDWash 600s form the base wash lighting covering the set and
audience.

Twenty-four Pointes were dotted around the studio – all in the air – for all the
beam-technology and a host of cool and funky effects.

He is using 12 x miniPointe for the first time, four stationed behind the coach’s
chairs and the other eight on the stage floor, prominently in the main shots where
they created great ACL-style fans and camera effects as part of the general Angola
show look.

In addition to these, there are around 68 x LED PARs and 24 x LED battens plus
generics … all controlled via Cutts’s own system featuring a grandMA2 light console
and a VPU running all the video content for set LED panels. The rotation of the
coach’s chairs is also controlled through the console.

He is working closely with design associate Andre Siebrits on the production. FOH
sound is engineered by Auriot Booyes from Multi-Media.

De Lancey sums up, “It’s been very exciting working on something completely new,
and I’m delighted with the results and the way the team has gelled and
complimented one another. We are all very proud to be part of producing excellent
television in and for Africa’.