WGN Studios

Project name: WGN Studios

Principals:

Jeffrey Wilson, Director of Creative, WGN-TV, Antenna TV, and THIS-TV

Beth Fowler, Lighting Designer of Studio 2

Jim Sippel, Lighting Designer of Studio 1

Location: WGN-TV, Tribune Media, Chicago, IL, USA

Project scope: Two WGN studios needed an update two studios with versatile LEDs with enough flexibility to be operated without in-house lighting staff.

Solutions Group services: Sale only

Project Details:

• One of the challenges was to create lighting and a lighting interface that could work for all WGN news shows, with all the different announcers and camera angles, without dedicated lighting staff.
• Lighting fixtures need to stay pretty high, because WGN directors like to have big jib wide shots for bumps. Beth Fowler used Fresnel key lights, along with ARRI SkyPanel S120-Cs for soft, yet directional fill lights. S120-C – a big soft source, matched to the other LED lights, which operators can instantly adjust when new announcers sit down between shows.
• Both studios have a toolbox in which the S120-Cs provide maximum flexibility for all the programming done there.

Customers quote:

Jim Sippel: “The ARRI SkyPanel S120-C fixtures are also currently being used on the news set, giving a lot of coverage on a three-wall side. For news applications or any kind of base light application effect, the SkyPanel S120-C is larger but helps provide a softer light, because it’s spreading the light out over a larger service area. The S120-Cs also help supplement the S60-Cs on stands, and it’s very easy for me to dial the S120-C in to match the studio’s tungsten lighting. Because it’s a variable white, I can actually match it to the color temperature in the fixtures of the room, and not have to provide any external color correction to it. One of the things I like about the S120-Cs is that they can be utilized for everything from background elements, base light elements or color saturation elements for the band.