Spotlight: What I Do As a Broadcast Lighting Designer

If you’ve never spent time on set before, you might be surprised at how much thought has gone into lighting design. Designers don’t just show up and flip a switch – it’s a complex planning process that directly affects the mood of a broadcast, film, or performance.

Of course, there are a million factors to consider when designing lighting, from how the main actors or presenters are lit and visible from multiple cameras to creating an attractive backdrop that sets the tone for the shoot. In addition, there are musical cues and segment changes that require preprogrammed dynamic lighting. Just show and flick the switch, really. To learn a little about what goes into lighting design, we spoke with Mike Grabowski , a lighting designer based in New York.

First, tell us a little about your current job and how long you have been doing it.

Hey! My name is Mike Grabowski and I am a Senior Designer at The Lighting Design Group in New York. I’ve been there for a little over eight years. However, I have been in the live streaming and broadcasting industry for about 15 years.

Primarily, I work as a broadcast lighting designer, although I have experience in theater, dance and event lighting design.

Since everyone asks, I design both the technical and the artistic part of the lighting for the show – I decide with the rest of the team what angle the light comes in, with what intensity and what color. It includes several disciplines: drafting, rendering, sketching, and then plotting. This is an interesting job. While other groups are producing physical things – like wall decorations – what I create is much more ephemeral. This is a talent for drawing, decoration and the very air of light. Pretty neat.

Mostly I work in a multi-camera studio and on the road, sometimes I turn into scripted dramas.

Currently, in addition to pilots and specials, I’m working on Girl Code Live on MTV, Uncommon Sense on MTV2 , just wrapping up season 5 of AMC Comic Book Men , and I’m preparing for History’sForged in Fire and ABC’s Dick. Clark’s New Years Eve in Times Square. Plus, I’m writing this on the subway to St Patrick’s for the New York Pope’s visit.

What prompted you to choose your career path?

To be honest, I got into this at an early age and was able to jump the trail very early on. Before working in broadcasting (and lighting in general), I worked as a production actor and magician in the Philadelphia area, in high school and college. I was fortunate enough to meet people who also worked in the theater at that time, and I happened to work in the team of electricians (who implement the design of the lighting designer). This fascinated me. Watching a decorator create the world and a lighting designer breathe life into the air while the sound engineer gave him a heartbeat – it was a wonderful world of illusion – and I was paid to do a small part of that. I had to achieve this.

How did you get a job?

Since I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work in the field of lighting, I tried to work as much as possible and train as well as I could. When I graduated from college, I had a wonderful circle of people I relied on. This industry is mostly made up of freelancers, so it was easy to get out of it and call yourself LD. In fact, it was much more difficult to do it. I worked as an electrician, draftsman, programmer – any job I could, and experienced and learned every role I could.

What kind of education and experience did you need?

One of the best decisions I made was to participate in the SUNY Purchase Design Technology program. It is a program specifically designed to “train” people who are serious about working in this industry. I studied with professors who have worked on Broadway, in television and in film, and learned how wide a career in “lighting” can be.

After that, it became a reality. I had to draw, work as an electrician, a little of everything. I stumbled upon the TV end of things because of drafts. Although I loved theater, the speed and immediacy of television immediately attracted me. If the show is broadcast live at 8:00 pm on a Tuesday, there are no business interruptions. You either do it, or perhaps millions of people see you fail.

What are you doing besides what most people see? What do you actually spend most of your time on?

Working as a lighting designer (and, I suspect, with other design professionals) is a bit weird. In many ways, we are both a product and a seller. When clients call me, they usually appeal to my aesthetics, my collaborative style and my contribution to production. Most of my time is fairly evenly split between the preparatory part (making lists of equipment, assembling teams, making budgets, design meetings, drawing up drawings, meetings with other designers and producers) and on-site work (getting to the site and asking my team to implement all the plans, which we have carefully designed, and respond to surprises, as well as any changes). I am very fortunate to work with The Lighting Design Group because we have an extensive support staff to support me in many technical aspects. It’s an advantage that many freelancers and small businesses don’t have, and it really allows me to focus on the client’s needs.

Basically, it’s a smooth operation – the gimmicks and creativity for a show can change in the blink of an eye, so you have to be ready to adapt at any moment … and realize that in five minutes we are still alive.

What misconceptions do people often have about your job?

I think a lot of people think that I just “turn on” the lights, or that I “turn on the lights,” or just politely nod and smile because they were a “techie” in high school. All of this is correct in some way and provides some insight, but rarely gives the full picture.

This is a strange job, unparalleled in a more “standard” (is there such a thing?) Job. A typical process would be something like this:

1. The client talks about the project.
2. Start thinking about design, research, meet other designers, directors and producers of the project, etc. What colors, angles, textures are needed for this show?
3. Production Meetings: Regular meetings to discuss an ever-evolving project, our design ideas and concepts, and technical logistics.
4. Create and submit budgets balancing both cost and overall vision.
5. Draw up the light plot and any other necessary documents.
6. As soon as the budget and design concept is approved and agreed upon, and the documents are ready, we go to the studio or location.
7. A team of electricians, led by a foreman, begins to hang the lights, transmitting electricity and data to them.
8. While this is happening, I am working to see if there are any changes, or watch the hang so I don’t make any changes on the fly.
9. After the lights are hung, I work with my team to direct each light, while working with my programmer to point any smart light sources or program LED lights.
10. We then run the show based on a rundown (breakdown of the show by action) or script.
11. Repetition! We edit, tweak and reshape as needed to better match what producers and filmmakers are looking for, working with a video engineer all the time.
12. Film the show! All this now ends with execution.

Although it takes a long time to read, sometimes steps 7-12 get stuck in a day or two, even with hundreds of lights. Heck, if this is headline news, the whole process sometimes takes a week.

What’s your average uptime?

Not really that kind of thing. Today I was at my workplace at 8 am. Tomorrow at 11 am. Friday – 3 am. Sunday I work and will arrive at 17 … On Monday I am working on a live show that airs at 22:30, so we arrive at 13:30. But I don’t have to go to work on Wednesday or Thursday, so I’m catching up on a few budgets and running on business. All of this suggests that there is no typical timetable. Remember, each performance is a separate thing. So you have to be responsible for your schedule and your clients. They don’t care if you worked for someone else before 2am. If they hired you, they want you to be bright at 8am and always on top.

This is rarely a constant schedule, so I cannot schedule a Transcendental Meditation session followed by a fully organic cocktail every Sunday morning. I need to be flexible according to the needs of my clients, including being ready to intervene in the event of sensational news. The average week is about 50 hours, although these can be focused on three days.

What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?

One of the most important things I’ve learned to make my job easier is to know about cameras. Ultimately, if the show has an audience, we want them to have a good time, but actually the most important viewer for me is the camera – that’s what is broadcast. The more I’m familiar with cameras – knowing their capabilities and limitations – the better I can communicate effectively with the videographer (the person who controls the aperture, color, and all camera settings and profiles, among a million other things). Knowing how to talk to them helps both of us find the best possible production option.

On a broader level, cloud integration in addition to VPN solutions has been a huge thing – being able to remotely access files from my phone or iPad while filming in a New Jersey field makes it much easier to create information for my team.

What are you doing differently from your colleagues or colleagues in the same profession? What are they doing instead?

I think a lot of us work very similarly – we all want the show to work, work, and be as good as possible. It’s hard to say how we are different – I rarely talk to other lighting designers in the workplace. If I’m there, then all other designers work on other sites. However, we all offer different things – some designers admire the sophisticated portrait lighting you see on major web and cable news broadcasts. Others are a little more rock and roll and give the table more color and theatricality. Thanks to my work experience, I am fortunate to be able to offer my clients both sides.

Another difference is personality and what each of us brings to this or that place. One thing I emphasize is to stay calm and help keep a steady hand. When everyone is fussing around, I try to be the most prepared guy in the room, so if the curve is thrown, there will be no screams and chaos. Give me a minute, I’ll get Plan F and my team out, and I’ll get you covered.

What’s the worst part of a job and how do you deal with it?

This is a strange life, and if you don’t enter it with your eyes open, it can be very difficult. Inconsistent hours are the hardest. I am fortunate to have a very understanding wife who also works in the entertainment industry. This work-life balance is easy to break down. There are times when you can work 15-20 days in a row. After all, I travel a lot for work, and if you can’t stand it, it can be tough. The biggest plus I’ve found with television is that most of the people I am fortunate enough to work with have realized that this is work . We’re going to make it as beautiful, amazing and perfect as we can … within the allotted and budgetary time frame. Then let’s go home and have some fun with friends and family.

What is the most enjoyable part of the job?

There is something to love. It’s a very small community of people, so it’s a family. Even on different coasts, in different countries, even if we do not know each other, we know someone in common.

It is always amazing to be able to act out a spectacle in wonderful conditions and in an amazing time frame.

Being able to visit places and see things – I am writing this after visiting some of the highest corners of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City as we light it up during the Pope’s visit.

Most of all – and it will sound incredibly stupid – when people come home after a long hard day, I make them smile. Relax. Programming can be trivial at times, but being able to help people escape even a little is kind of amazing. Listening to doctors, nurses, soldiers – people who have really hard, important jobs – saying that they liked the show I did, or that they come home and relax watching something that I was on the team for – it’s pretty cool.

I always go back to a quote embroidered in the first tech booth I ever worked in, and I think it sums it up nicely:

“In the era of the line for bread, depression and wars, I tried to help people get rid of all adversity; draw their attention to something else. I wanted to make people happy, at least for an hour. ” —Busby Berkeley

How are you “progressing” in your field?

It’s a strange question to advance in my specialty. It’s more about finding a job that brings you joy and is good at. Once you have secured enough, you can get a bigger, more professional job as you prove yourself, if that will determine your “progress up”, but your rank will not change. The best way for people getting started in the industry is to discover any job they can. Be a helper. Be a programmer. Be an electrician. Be a bum. The more you know other roles, the more likely you are to find a role that suits you and your skill set. If you are looking for a title upgrade, this may not be for you.

What do people underestimate / overestimate in what you do?

The biggest underestimation is when it is assumed that me and the lighting team are just “turning on the lights.” Rather, my team and I created the look and feel with all the departments. We lit the background with a nice magenta color to contrast with the host’s skin tone, but also match the show’s logo – and make them disappear from the screen. We made sure that their highlights were a little amber to give the hair additional tone and richness. Since we heard that the talent is working late on the plot, we used a soft, flattering light and set the height of the key lights a little lower so that the bags under the eyes were not visible. I would work with a video to soften the look a bit and remove a few details on the skin for an even more flattering look. Maybe we could increase the chroma a little so that everything is much richer and fuller. The director, producer, production designer and I have worked together to make their experience and footage as engaging and flattering as possible. I chatted with makeup and hair to make sure we were on the same page so that makeup would give talent the right shine without making them look like they were sweating. Much more than just turning on the lights.

What advice would you give to those who want to become your profession?

This is a complex industry in which you cannot sit back and wait. You cannot wait there and say that you were simply not given the opportunity to shine. [It takes] hard work. Devotion. Grind.

It is a business based on reputation and personalities. Don’t be a jerk. If you are hiring employees, pay people on time. Respect other people’s time and efforts as much as you want yours to be respected.

Never look down on another job or other show staff position. Find out what their job is. Help them. Maybe this is exactly the job that suits you, but you just don’t know it.

Have fun with it and understand, if you are lucky enough to stumble across a job in this or related field – this is a stupid, wonderful, eccentric and crazy world filled with wonderful people, terrible people, amazing stories and experiences, trying and tiring times – realize, that we are all incredibly lucky to make a living doing this. At the same time, it is just a job; don’t let it become all-consuming. Don’t forget to see your friends, explore new places … roam. Maintain this balance and help energize your creativity.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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