Philips Vari-Lite VLX Wash on MTV's Bellator

In recent years, the sporting world has seen a rise in interest in mixed martial arts and television production companies have responded. MTV produces the action-packed, 12-week tournament named Bellator, a single-elimination event that features some of the best fighters in a winner-takes-all competition. Behind the scenes of the nationally-televised matches, lighting designer David Zeffren and assistant Amy Harper, of Frank Gatto & Associates, have created a lighting design using the VLX Wash from Philips Vari-Lite. "The Bellator Fighting Championship is a one-of-a-kind event that puts top fighters into a single elimination tournament and allows the fighters themselves to control who is named champion in the end," began Zeffren. "And like the competition itself, our lighting design is also unique in that we are the first MMA broadcast to use a fully automated rig for our TV lighting instead of conventional tungsten fixtures. This year, as we were getting ready to launch the Season Five tournament, we wanted to look at new automated lighting that would give us more accurate color temperature control and better optics."

Zeffren attended a product demonstration by Philips Vari-Lite regional sales manager Alan Kibbe in New York, during which he was introduced to the VLX Wash.

"When I first saw the VLX Wash, the most significant aspect of the light that initially struck me was the flatness of the beam field. We use multiple cameras from multiple angles and it's difficult with other automated fixtures to get a true flat field across the whole space that you are lighting. The VLX Wash is extremely even from the center of the beam to the edge. There is literally no level drop and this translates to a better shot for TV.

"But the characteristic that I like most about the VLX Wash is that you can literally dial-in any color temperature you want. This means I can give the video engineer an exact and consistent color temperature to work with -- and that goes a long way on a television shoot, especially when a color temperature other than the common 3,200 Kelvin is being used."

Zeffren returned to the production to begin showing the full team what the VLX Wash could do. It began at a Summer Series event before Bellator's matches officially got underway, and, since that day, the VLX Wash has been the workhorse of the lighting rig.

"During a summer event in Ft. Lauderdale, we rented a VLX Wash package from Zenith Lighting, and this was the first time that the full production team would get to see them in action," Zeffren said. "And, when they saw them, they immediately wanted nothing else. It was requested that I bring the VLX Wash units back for the full Bellator production, which I did with 30 VLX Wash luminaires from Scharff Weisberg who has been providing gear and tour support since the first season of Bellator.

"What other designers might not be aware of about the VLX is that it's an LED fixture that can be used as the main light source for TV, which is not the case with many other LED or moving light fixtures. With the VLX Wash, the colors are completely merged before they ever leave the fixture, and you need to be very careful when using a large number of other LED fixtures, because the colors might merge outside the light and when dealing with high definition cameras you might not be able to get a consistent color temperature. But with the VLX Wash, you don't have any of those issues, and, when you put all that it has to offer on the table, this light has no match."