Nick Hutak, Lighting Designer: Relighting a TV news studio with BB&S

Twice Emmy-awarded Nick Hutak has designed 130 broadcast studios across four continents

New light on Cleveland

Lighting designer Nick Hutak has his own spin on TV news studio lighting and it’s catching on. His background in traditional cinematography of narrative films, broadcast TV and commercials helps him create his hallmark look for talent and sets.

Hutak was brought in by Broadcast Design International to design and specify a new LED lighting rig for Cleveland’s WOIO-TV19 (Gray Television CBS affiliate).

The set consists of a four-presenter desk, five-seat talk show area with 12’ video wall, two-touch screen stand-up venues and a 12’ video weather wall. Set elements change color as robotic cameras capture it all with presenters moving between areas, live on camera – all in a 45’x45’ space!

Lighting faces

Hutak explains that the person in the medium close-up is selling trust, so lighting should be flattering and forgiving, not flat and boring. Newscasters with diverse skin tones appear close together, in different combinations at different times of day, so he chooses a surrounding base light with a soft key light to pick out each face at the desk. He says in-desk lighting is cosmetically flattering and creates a sparkle in the eye. He uses a sharp backlight to separate talent from the background to get that fashion photography look in a live theatrical setting.

Remote phosphor fixtures by BB&S Lighting

Hutak’s primary lights are from GTC sponsor BB&S:

“Their passive cooled (no fans) remote phosphor (last forever) fixtures are the perfect answer. With 98 TLCI they come in various shapes and sizes with smooth flicker-free dimming.”

Pipeline linear, low-profile 'pipes', allow him to specify convenient configurations even with low grid height studios.

“I used 3’ and 4’ 4-Banks for base lighting and to carry presenter movement.”

For a soft key he chooses the Area 48 11”x14” rectangular fixture. Pipeline Reflect comes in a range of sizes: 2’ 2-banks are recessed into slots in the set to provide a separation light on presenters standing 1’ in front of the 10’ high weather wall. The 1’ Reflect, hides in the desk as the all-important chin light.

Praising their accuracy and consistency, in a world where drift and colour change are common, he says:

“I recently visited a station we installed over 4 years ago and there was absolutely no color shift – they read the exact same color on the meter. It’s that consistency I love."

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