When MTV decided to consolidate its multiple Twitter accounts into one new account managed by a social media-savvy Twitter Jockey (TJ), the network launched a televised competition: "Follow Me: The Search for the First MTV TJ." The series culminated in a live show with five finalists featuring lighting design by Vibrant Design's Christopher Landy who was supported by an extensive lighting complement from Scharff Weisberg.
The live show hosted by Sway, in which voters named Gabi Gregg the winning Twitter Jockey, was shot at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's upstairs BAM Café/Lepercq Space. "The BAM Café is a very cool space with corrugated metal arches, lined with incandescent lamps and an LED art instillation that accents BAM's Signature arched windows. MTV's in-house art director Andi Lady was awesome," says Landy. "Often we just get a blank stage that needs art direction, but this was a great environment to shoot in, and Andi really embraced that."
Scharff Weisberg senior project manager John Healy notes that the unconventional performance space was a challenging venue to light. "I don't think BAM had done anything this size in that room," says Healy. "It was adapted on the fly into a theatrical space, and it's always fun to take a venue like that and change people's perspective of it."
The company supplied Landy with a complement of conventional ETC Source 4 750-watt Lekos to light the talent plus LEDs and automated fixtures to amp up the energy for the band and the Twitter Jockey competition. Automated lights included VARI*LITE VL2500 spots, VL2500 washes, VL3000 spots and VL3000 washes. 48-inch Colorblaze LEDs were featured along with four Elation Impressions. A grandMA lighting console controlled all the technology.
"We squeezed in as much as we could," Landy reports. "John and everyone at Scharff Weisberg gave us great support and helped us embrace this really cool space and give it a unique MTV look."
Mike Grimes served as Landy's gaffer for the show. Matthew Mills was the event producer. Ben Rollins was Scharff Weisberg's project manager.
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