What It Was

For the fourth year of its Roundtable, Stanford University came up with a theme to match the current economic and political times:
"The Road Back: From Economic Meltdown to Renewal". The event which is held during homecoming at Stanford's Maples Pavilion, attracts up to 8,000 people for a panel discussion of mostly Stanford alumni which can include Supreme Court justices, former Secretaries of State and journalists such as Thomas Friedman.

This year's roundtable was hosted by Charlie Rose who held court on with a panel that consisted of John Hennessey, President of Stanford, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Guillermo Ortiz, Governor of the Bank of Mexico, and Penny Pritziker, from the President's Economic Advisory Board.

The production is held in the round in the Maples Pavilion, a large basketball and volleyball arena. The stage is circular and resembles a stylized globe of the planet Earth. Charlie Rose was stationed on a stool at one end of the stage while the 6 panel members were arrayed around the other.

The show has become so popular that it is now shot in HD and broadcast on PBS.

What We Did

The lighting of the Stanford Roundtable had to balance the needs of a live panel discussion with a broadcast media event. The event was held around several games and practices at the Maples Pavilion that necessitated setting up, removing and re-installing the stage and portions of the lighting system.

In addition, because of the steep rake to the Arena the trim of the lighting trusses needed to be very high to not block sightlines of the audience in the upper sections to the stage, the IMAG screen and the scoreboard for the sporting events held during the week.

Principal Designer, Norm Schwab, working with Associates Paul Efron and Mark Gimore, Gaffer Dave Hatch and programmer Eric Docktor developed a lighting system of primarily moving lights that could provide key, back, fill, audience and general ambient lighting for the Pavilion. A package VL3500's, 1000 AS's and 2000 washes supplied by Island Creative worked perfectly for the creative, budgetary and technical needs.

A circular truss that echoed the stage design hung just under the scoreboard holding backlights and audience lighting. It was lit from within with LED's that went red for Stanford colors and more subtle Ambers and Blues for other portions. The bare arena floor was utilized as scenic element and broken up with warm, amber breakup patterns. The audience was lit with a slightly cool color temperature that contrasted with the wamth of the floor and stage.

Why It Worked

At the beginning of the project it was made clear by Stanford that the Roundtable needed to look beautiful and professional on TV, but not look like a large, invasive production that was too "flashy" or "showy".

The moving lights along with the professionalism of the entire crew helped the project work given the extensive technical needs of installing and reinstalling the lighting system at all hours of the night in order to meet the needs of the building.

Lightswitch worked with Bagshaw and Associates, Stanford producer Elaine Enos, Karen Stillwell from Stanford TV and Video Director Mauricio Quijano to help achieve this successfully.