An award-winning media designer, Zachary “Zak” Borovay has joined Visual Terrain, a Santa Clarita, California-based lighting design firm, as director of media design, a principal-level position. Visual Terrain will immediately add media design and production to its services.
Borovay’s credits include media and system design for 12 Broadway productions, including the five-time Tony Award®-nominated Rock of Ages. In recent years, Borovay has also done design, consultation and show writing for multiple projects at Disneyland, Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, as well as media projects for Norwegian Cruise Line, Sephora, PBS, The Smithsonian, Lincoln Center, CBS, The Kennedy Center, Resorts World International Sentosa and the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. He is also a co-host of the Light Talk podcast with the Lumen Brothers.
While Visual Terrain has collaborated with outside media designers on its past projects, the company is looking forward to bringing that skill set in-house, exemplifying CEO and principal-in-charge Lisa Passamonte Green’s belief that “every pixel is a light, every light can be a pixel. “I’m very excited to have Zak on the team,” Green says. “He brings an entirely new dimension of storytelling to our services, and now our clients can trust that the media and lighting in our projects will play nicely together.”
Borovay adds, “I couldn’t be more thrilled to join forces with Lisa and the team at Visual Terrain. Their creativity and inventiveness is extraordinary and the quality and execution of their work is exceptional. I am excited for our newly created media department to continue that level of excellence for our clients.” Borovay joins Visual Terrain’s team of 11, including newly hired project manager, Brittany Patterson. He first met Green through Pat MacKay, who quips, “I can take no credit for this match! Zak was in LA. Lisa and David were at a TEA mixer at The Bezark Co. Who knew it would take a pandemic to finally bring them together?"
“I spent the last few years prior to the pandemic working on several long-term projects for Disney Parks while continuing my career in theater, installations, and events,” adds Borovay. “Whenever Visual Terrain was asked to recommend a media person in a pitch, Lisa often recommended me to handle it. We decided that it was finally time to formally join forces and offer our services together in a more holistic and direct way.”
Visual Terrain will continue to offer lighting services, and will also offer media services as a solo offering. “But the real magic will happen we can provide the client with both together! We have a few proposals out there already, so we will see what happens. Our media department is still young, but we’ve been working behind the scenes to insure that we are already prepared to take on projects of all scales and sizes. I can see the potential for it to grow as big as the lighting side of the company. I will also continue to design for theater. So when Broadway calls, I will certainly answer. But now with the expanded super powers of Visual Terrain,” explains Borovay.
“One of the more exciting things for me is the potential to add media to their interactive lighting product, Luminous Terrain. I am also excited to continue my work on immersive attractions and experiences, now alongside Lisa and her team. They have so much experience and have enjoyed so much success there. The company is just this amazing, massive brain trust. I think this is an opportunity for me to use all the current tools we have at our disposal today to create immersive stories, and maybe even invent some new ones,” Borovay says.
“At the core, we firmly believe that we are visual storytellers and that whatever we create together should be a transformative experience for the viewer or guest. And with our new partnership, we believe we can achieve that,” he concludes.