Since 1997 Ferri has been lighting the commentators at the US Open and continually advancing the technology used at the event. This year FLDA also brought their expertise to re-lighting the USTA's permanent Press Room at the tennis centre.
For the press interview room, FLDA brought in a completely new lighting system to address the current needs of the USTA. "The room had a pipe with tungsten Fresnels for the interview area," explains Ferri. "They wanted to get the heat down in that room and use a low-energy, more discrete, attractive lighting system for their press conferences. Their request was to create a feeling like the 'White House Press Room;' we wanted to give the videographers and photographers nice, even lighting to shoot under. We needed to give sufficient coverage for press conferences of one to three people typically but that could easily scale up for five to seven people."
For lights in the USTA Press Room, FLDA selected Chroma-Q Studio Force D XT 12 LED luminaires for keylighting using partially recessed mounting. Backlighting is handled with fully recessed RH+A LED Bullets. "We are running levels at 60FC and we are shooting at daylight colour temperature (CT) in the USTA Press Room," Ferri says.
"We chose that for two reasons. One the video crews and photographers wouldn't have to change their camera settings from inside to outside and since there's a 3x3 monitor wall behind the interview position, that's already native with a daylight CT, it just makes balancing the colours that much easier." The FLDA team chose an Electronic Theatre Controls' Unison Echo eight-button Preset Station, which allows for easy operation when calling up the various pre-programmed interview looks.
During the U.S. Open itself, both outside and inside, there are commentator and interview desk setups spread over 13 locations throughout the tennis center complex. FLDA worked closely with ESPN and ESPN International, who provided over 130 hours of live televised coverage paired with over 1,300 hours of coverage online at WatchESPN online.
FLDA also lit a variety of locations for ITV and Japan's WowWow for Internet and International outlets respectively. Ferri notes, "One of our big challenges at the US Open is just the physical reality of having multiple locations so spread out. That is something we work hard to stay ahead of with all of our organizing. We have a small army of people who are out here keeping everything straight with all the different schedules of the sessions, and sourcing all of the gear.
"I give a lot of credit to FLDA's lighting designer Matt Gordon who oversaw the logistics of the crew and locations; he logged about seven miles every day, on foot, and our FLDA project manager Leigh Mundy-Fretz who worked with all of our vendors. She dealt with those logistics and getting the equipment that we required."
(Jim Evans)
