Jean-Philippe Bourdon upgrades two studio sets with high-quality, high-value framing luminaire.
In France, two of the country’s most popular game shows, Tout le monde veut prendre sa place and N'oubliez pas les paroles!, both broadcast on France 2, have been staples of French television for well over a decade. Over the years, Jean-Philippe Bourdon, one of France’s most renowned lighting designers and directors of photography, has handled lighting duties for the popular programs and has recently added Elation Fuze Profile™ moving heads to his lighting toolbox.
Bourdon, who is also known for his work in concert and cinema productions, has numerous top television shows to his credit including the popular rock music program Taratata, for which he won two Sept d'or awards, and the celebrated TV concert series Les Enfoirés. On the sets of Tout le monde veut prendre sa place (Everyone Wants to Take His Place), a general knowledge quiz show that consistently receives over a 20% market share, and N'oubliez pas les paroles! (Don't Forget the Lyrics!), which has broadcast over 2000 episodes, he was looking to upgrade his lighting kit. “On one of my shows the set was changed and I wanted to modernize the equipment by replacing my old VL 2500 Spots for another efficient mover,” he explains. “I first saw the Fuze Profile at a demo organized by DuShow TV after asking them to show me a comparable replacement fixture and after seeing it, I was convinced.”
Bourdon specified the lighting for both productions, including placement of fixtures and programming, and designed effects such as on-set animation and audience illumination. His lighting setup consists of LED wash lights to highlight props and the audience, color changers to wash the first backdrop, one-lights and LED Pars on a second backdrop, and Ellipsoidal and 2K and 5K Fresnels for key light. The Fuze Profile fixtures he uses for effects onto the floor, on props and onto the second backdrop. “I have 10 of them on the floor in order to make nice beams on the props and the other 11 are spread out on the grid,” he said while noting that all 21 fixtures are used throughout the show.
An ideal framing fixture for television, the Fuze Profile houses a 305W 6,500K RGBMA LED engine with high CRI. Its 5-color homogenized LED array not only ensures accurate color reproduction with a beautiful mixed white, it also provides color manipulation features like virtual color temperature and Magenta / Green adjustment plus CMY emulation.
“The smoothness of the color mixing from the RGBMA engine is excellent and there is a nice light spread throughout the beam,” Bourdon stated. “That also makes it possible to use it as key light on game show participants.” The luminaire’s feature set is quite vast and includes a full blackout framing system, wide zoom, gobos, animation wheel, frost, prism and iris, all in a compact, quiet and lightweight fixture. The LD calls it a very useful package and says the luminaires have been “very reliable.”
Bourdon is a designer known for using light to create suspense and the tension inherent in a competitive game show provides the perfect opportunity to thrill viewers and audiences. He shares one particular look: “As a special look near the end of the show, during the final contest, the Fuze Profile replaces all key lights and backlights and points down with different color patterns to create a suspenseful look and feeling. It’s a nice effect.” On another show, he says he uses them as backlight, as well as key light onto musicians. “All in all, I’m very satisfied with the Fuze Profile “belle machine”!
