Virtual Showlight 2021 confirms speakers

Showlight has announced the speakers for its one-day online Virtual Showlight on 25 May 2021. 

In a snapshot of the full Showlight event, a series of papers will be presented by international keynote speakers, interspersed by a series of video shorts from the likes of Peggy Eisenhower and Bill Klages. There will also be a discussion panel based on the subject of diversity in the lighting industry, chaired by award-winning lighting designer, Paule Constable. 

The speakers for Virtual Showlight 2021 are: 

David Bishop 

BBC ‘s Strictly Come Dancing’s award-winning lighting designer will outline the challenges of re-designing an icon of UK television after 15 years, the latest season of which required the incorporation of live augmented reality into the show. 

Ken Billington, Rob Halliday, Aaron Porter (Lighting Around The World Without Leaving Home: The Story of  Waitress in Japan)

When Japan closed its borders just after Christmas, the production team for the musical Waitress were no longer able to travel to put the long-scheduled Tokyo production on stage. But the show must go on – so they figured out how to do the show remotely. For lighting, that meant LD Ken Billington and his associate Aaron Porter in New York, programmer Rob Halliday in London, and the crew in Japan…. 

Isabel Nielsen, Floriaan Ganzevoort, Mike Evers (From Shipyard to Street Art Museum)  

Floriaan Ganzevoort, Isabel Nielen and Mike Evers, are lighting designers and partners at Theatermachine light design and consultancy in The Netherlands. They will talk us through the 2-year light design process which transformed a monumental industrial shipyard building into a museum. With a limited budget, the team mixed daylight, theatre lighting, exhibition lighting and architectural lighting in this rough and tough, ‘one-of-a-kind’ venue. 

 Mike Bauman  (Lighting a Comic Book Movie – Birds of Prey Case Study) 

Michael Bauman has been an IATSE 728 gaffer for over 25 years with film credits that include Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Ford v Ferrari, Phantom Thread, Munich, Nightcrawler, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. He will dive deep into the visual strategy and technical execution of the lighting for the comic book movie Birds of Prey, beginning with the visual ideas conceived by cinematographer Matthew Libatique ASC, and looking at how LED, automated and video technologies were used in lighting the film. 

Hamish Jenkinson (The Disco Lighthouse)

Hidden on a Caribbean island sits the world’s most expensive Lighthouse. Located on the paradisiacal Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, The Lighthouse features a custom-designed light show designed to showcase the flora and fauna of this beautiful island paradise, and tell the story of Marine Reserve and MSC’s dedication to conservation, through animation across its 150,000 individual LEDs. Après-show, the lighthouse becomes a ‘disco’ beacon for the guests on the island to party alongside. Created by The Department Ltd with lighting design from Woodroffe Bassett Design.  

There will also be a discussion panel formed of lighting professionals Dawn Chiang, Jane Dutton, Prema Mehta, Rajiv Pattani, John Piper and Momena Saleem, and chaired by internationally acclaimed lighting designer Paule Constable, will explore some of the issues around diversity in the industry. 

Each paper will be followed by a Q&A session giving delegates the opportunity to put their questions to the speakers, and plenty of opportunities for networking and touching base with our sponsors in their breakout rooms. Further details of the speaker line up will be available shortly on the Showlight website (www.showlight.org). 

Tickets for Virtual Showlight are now available via the website.