SWR Stuttgart
In August 2010, SWR (the public-servic broadcasting for south-west Germany) commissioned the lighting equipment of the studios of the new broadcasting cernter in Stuttgart. The studios were
accepted in September 2011 after only 12 months of construction (including detailed planning) and handed over to the SWR.
The new building contains 4 production studios with approx. 400, 280, 100 and 108 m², which are equipped with the most modern lighting technology. The motorized telescope and spotlight technology
in 3 studios allows a fully automatic operation with position storage. The colored background design is done with LED technology behind projection screens.
The planning specifications of the SWR were based on the experience with automated lighting technology in Studio 1 of the old location Villa Berg as well as the latest findings on the use of modern LED technology for the background design with graphic designs, ticker and video content. Extensive trials by the SWR led to clear specifications in the call for tenders.
The planning implementation of the necessary infrastructures in the field of studio ceilings was carried out with the precision rail systems TV-TRACK TT 200 and flanged Vahle busbars. Both the lighting telescopes and the media telescopes as well as the chain hoists are moved in their own rail systems.
The 3 fully automated studios will use a total of 255 MTS telescopes with motorized Fresnel spotlights for lighting, 18 media telescopes with AV ports, and 45 chain hoists. All devices are controlled by the LSS studio automation systems Discovery. Separate control panels are available for the chain hoists, also with touch panel .
It uses 2 kW spotlights with 250 mm lens and 2/1kW spotlights with 175 mm lens from Arri, while the 2 kW units are mainly equipped only with 1000 W lamps. The motorization of the headlights was supplied by Lichttechnik Munich.
In the smaller Studio D, with a lower ceiling height, manually operated pantographs are used in TV TACK TT 120 rails, as well as pole-operated Fresnel spotlights and fluorescent softlights.
Lighting control desks grandMA Light were chosen for the lighting control in the 3 control rooms and the 2 large studios. In the two smaller studios control systems grandMA on PC were built in as wall control panels. The lighting desks are networked together, so that the control rooms can be assigned to the studios arbitrarily. All control desks are illuminated with Contro-LED workplace luminaires. As a dimmer thyristor devices by MA-Lighting with 400us rise time are used , which communicate with the lighting desks regarding status values or error messages. The resulting harmonics of the dimmer technology and the different phase loads are controlled by active filters from Schaffner per studio.
A particular challenge was the planning implementation and the installation of LED technology in 3 studios. Cyclorama surfaces of up to 560 m² (height 6 m) including the curves are illuminated with RGB LEDs in the pixel grid of 10 cm at a distance of 16 - 23 cm. Together with the projection screen Transmission stretched in front of the LEDs, there are endlessly versatile design possibilities with homogeneous color surfaces as well as static or dynamic color gradients, text projections or other content from video sources. The projection sharpness depends on the distance between the LEDs and the foil and can be changed by shifting the LED construction. The bulge created by tensioning the projection screen in the curve areas is compensated by special fixtures of the individual LED strips, which allow bending and thus adjusting the distance to the film, so that the images are the same on the straight surfaces as well as in the curved areas.
The smaller Studio C has been designed as a virtual studio and has a green-box background lit by cold-light INTEGRA HZ 2 x 160 W cyclorama lights. The system ISYGLT from Seebacher was used for connecting the main- and subdistributions and the studio general lighting from the respective control rooms, even if the assignment to the studios was changed. The system is freely programmable and operated via touch panel stations.