Flexible Lighting for Japanese Music Show

Uta No Hit is a music show that is dedicated to the traditional form of Japanese music known as Enka. Enka loosely translates as a kind of love ballad, and, like American country and blues, usually centers on themes of nostalgia, separation, and unrequited love. Once deemed to be virtually extinct, Enka is now experiencing something of a revival as the Japanese reclaim their musical heritage.

Broadcast weekly from Tokyo’s channel 12 studios, Uta No Hit provides a popular platform for the Enka stars of today. As the show reflects a different decorative theme each week, a flexible lighting solution was a primary concern. To solve the difficulty of repainting the sets each week, Max Project Co. of Japan provided producers with electronic ballast versions of the Martin MAC 600 to wash the stages in color. MAC 500s too were used for pattern projection.

Another timesaving tool proved to be the Martin ShowDesigner, which allowed lighting operators to create the show’s complex lighting designs off-site without taking up valuable studio time. The Martin ShowDesigner was also an asset in accurately visualizing the colors. Max Project Co. commented, “It helps us to visualize the colors with MSD instead of with TV monitors. The difficulty of making colors for TV is that the colors look different when they are monitored.”