Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Robe helps unmask in Brazil

Lighting designer and DOP Alexandre “Alê” Augusto created a lighting scheme for the latest series of “The Masked Singer” in Brazil, with his rental company, Spectrun Design e Iluminação, supplying the lighting equipment and production.

The fifth season of the music TV show was recorded at Banijay Studios in the Guarulhos area of Sao Paulo, and Augusto collaborated closely on the design side of this project with another of Brazil’s leading lighting designers, Serginho Antonio. Both are keen users of Robe moving lights and LED products.

Prominent on Augusto’s lighting plot were twenty TetraXs - the first in Brazil - which were rigged on a shaped and automated truss that moved in and out to create different architectural looks in the studio. Augusto used MMX WashBeams for key lighting the judges and six of Spectrun’s 24 new Paintes which replaced bulkier spotlights from another brand as “deck candy” on the floor behind the artists, and often visible in shots.

Augusto has lit “The Masked Singer” since it started in Brazil, but the 2024 series was the first in this specific studio. He and Antonio worked with set designer Ludmila Machado and director Marcelo Amiky to create Brazil’s own look for the “Masked Singer” franchise. Augusto, Machado and Amiky regularly work as a creative team and have designed some of the highest-profile shows on Brazilian television.

Lighting needed to be big and pop-tastic, fitting to a sumptuous glossy-floor production with plenty of theatrical twists. Flexibility was the cornerstone of the lighting design for Augusto, who endeavours to make each series look different and within that, each of the individual artist performances. Time is always the challenge with this show, with four weeks of recording sandwiched in between eight rehearsal sessions to produce the twelve episodes, from which one winner emerges from sixteen finalists. Combining the moving lights (including others on the rig) with the automation enabled a set of unique structural looks to be achieved for each performance.

Positioning the TetraXs on a moving truss meant Augusto could get far more out of the fixtures than them just being effects in their own right. He leaned into the potential of the pixel and flower effects and the continuous pan. The Paintes - also recently delivered by Robe’s Sao Paulo-based distributor HPL - were on the floor, set up close to the many LED screens that made up the set structural elements.

Used for backlighting the artists, they were in shot much of the time. Augusto notes that the output of the previous fixtures in this position almost disappeared as soon as a colour went in. “It is vital for the cameras that we don’t suddenly lose intensity”, he says. Ten MMX WashBeam fixtures were rigged to come in from the front with three from each side to nicely key the judges, with the framing shutters being handy here as some of the fixtures were around thirty metres away.

Augusto worked on programming the show with operator Kelton “Ere” John - the pair have worked together on it for two years. Taking on the DOP role as well as lighting designer meant that Augusto looked after the key lighting, while John took care of programming all the moving and effects fixtures.

Augusto has been a lighting professional since 2006 and started working at Spectrun in 2014. The company was originally founded in the 1980s, and he has been the sole director of the company since 2020, when his then-business partner retired. Spectrun’s first Robe acquisitions were MMX WashBeams and LEDWash 600s around ten years ago. The Paintes and the TetraXs were purchased new for this “Masked Singer” show, and they currently have totals of 24 of each fixture.

(Photos: João Pedro Martins)

www.robe.cz

© 1999 - 2025 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories