One of the perpetual challenges facing Fred Bock, LD for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, is to give the NYC studio where the show is televised a bigger-than-it-really-is visual feel. Author Michael S. Eddy asked Fred how his lighting helps support the style and the overall look of the show, and the first thing Fred noted was his efforts to ”give the space a sense of size…Our director uses a lot of high angle camera shots and the space would start looking a lot smaller if lights were hung low, so I’ve taken more of a theatrical approach, using ellipsoidals and going right to the grid, backing everything off. By doing this we get the same angle, but the sense of a larger space. Every choice I made and every choice that was made about the show was all about keeping everything up as high as we could to help make the space look as large as it looks on television. Also, to support and light the scenery, we’ve done as much lighting internally or right up against the wall as possible. I am using more architectural-type fixtures, like [Philips] Color Kinetics’ ColorGraze units to help wash as much of the scenic walls as we could; as bright as possible.”
—LD Fred Bock, “Light Night Conversations,” PLSN, May 2016, page 46
