Speaker Spotlight: Lee Rose

Lighting designer Lee Rose, is a principal in Design Partners, an LA-based firm that brings together the expertise of a group of experienced lighting designers and production professionals with long-standing reputations in all areas of entertainment lighting. Rose joined Design Partners Inc. in 1998 after 14 years as a principal partner and lighting designer with another Los Angeles based firm. Over 35 years experience in concert, television and film lighting. Designed lighting for the Golden Globe® Awards for 17 years and has designed Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve for more than twenty.

His classic music specials include Yanni at the Acropolis (for which he had two EMMY nominations), Taj Mahal, and the Forbidden City, John Tesh live at Red Rocks, Roy Orbison’s filmed concert Black & White Night and Carly Simon’s My Romance. Specialty feature film work can be seen in Bringing Down the House, Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous, and Southland Tales.

Penn/Bright Entertainment called on Lee Rose to design the lighting for the concert performances in the upcoming season of the Disney Channels’ Hannah Montana, an Emmy Award-nominated television series, which debuted on March 24, 2006. With a set design by Tom McPhillips of Atomic Design, the production for the new season was staged at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine California. Videotaped in HD on the new Sweetwater "Cobalt" video truck with 10 cameras, the production began at sunset and continued into the night. Doug Mau was the staging supervisor.

Rose used a package of automated lighting including Vari-Lite 3000 Spots, 2500 Spots & Washes and Martin Atomic Strobes. Elation Professional provided 24 Elation Impression automated LED fixtures and some Opti TriPar LED fixtures. Lee commented that the Impressions were extremely bright and very fast. Screenworks provided LED columns that were 56" wide by 20' tall, fed by a coolux Pandoras Box media server with Michael Zinman handling the content development and programming.

Rose will participate in LDI’s Advanced Lighting and Media Technology in Motion Pictures session on Saturday, October 25 from 9-10:30am, a discussion of how automated lighting, media servers, and LEDs are being used in the motion picture industry and what improvements are needed in order to serve the industry better. Manufacturers and distributors will understand how this technology is being used in motion picture industry and how to improve products for this market. Attendees will get an understanding of the role of the lighting designer in the motion picture process. Moderated by Alan Rowe, the session also features Joshua Thatcher, Scott Barnes, John Tedesco, Jeff Ravitz, and Steve Gilbard.