I have worked on many intriguing projects throughout my career – from the design of an antique car museum to a rustic 1906 log lodge – but one of the most interesting of late was overseeing the interior design of the broadcast set for San Diego’s newest television station, U-T TV, a station recently launched by San Diego’s daily newspaper, U-T San Diego.
We worked in conjunction with general contractor and longtime colleague Bob Petrossian of Landmark Hospitality Contracting Inc. and partnered with seasoned lighting designers Matt McAdam and Darran Web – veterans of high profile television shows like American Idol.
Not surprisingly, what made this space especially unique was the lighting. Working alongside seasoned Hollywood lighting experts we constructed and designed the first broadcast set to exclusively use LED lighting. LED, light-emitting diode, is a technology that produces light differently from incandescent light resulting in beautiful and dramatic color changing effects produced from a single light source.
Appropriately, the studio’s backdrop includes San Diego iconic images such as Balboa Park, Del Mar horse races, downtown and the beach, all selected from the U-T San Diego photo archives capturing “America’s Finest City” in a multitude of formats. Because the set needed to be fluid and ever-changing, we installed Duratrans light boxes to reflect the many themes of San Diego. Using these methods, we can take a projected scene and throw light at it from behind, appearing “alive,” not fixed.
Since the set is a high-traffic area, we used durable flooring (faux finished by hand to resemble polished onyx marble and black granite), as well as exotic wood veneers, marble and bronze, all accented by our key design component, the specialty LED lighting. Vertical segments at the base of the broadcast set are lit from behind and can be accented with different colors and intensity.
A project not without challenges, our biggest consideration: ceiling height. The studio sits on the third floor of an office building, so height limitations were extreme. We had only 9 ½ feet work with, and we had to drop the ceiling to conceal mechanical equipment.
A space’s design is all about perception by the human eye. In this case, however, we had to consider how the area would be perceived through a camera’s eye, its lens. During the initial design process, we lacked the camera view, so we couldn’t actually see how the set would appear on screen. Talk about a challenge. I had to make my best delicately balanced “guestimate” – thankfully, it worked. For example, I was careful not to use broad expanses of color because other camera shots wouldn’t be able to capture the delineation of the layout.
This was a fast-tracked project using the most cutting-edge equipment available today. Through our extensive research and visits to other Southern California studios, we know that what we have produced at U-T TV is leaps ahead of the industry.
I love that Warren Sheets Design has a repertoire of unique, exciting one-of-a-kind projects that require high levels of creativity and expertise, and this project certainly was no different.
Tell me about your biggest design challenge. What creative steps did you take to overcome?
