09.03.2023 | LD Bobby Grey and KL FRESNEL give retro vibe to Stephen Sanchez "Late Late Show" performance

Lighting designer Bobby Grey of Notan Creative was brought in by 24/7 Productions to design a series of late night talk show appearances for singer-songwriter Stephen Sanchez and chose to incorporate Elation Professional's KL FRESNEL 8 FC soft light as a retro look fixture in his design for a February performance on "The Late Late Show With James Corden."

For the "Late Late Show" performance, Sanchez teamed with Em Beihold to deliver a remarkable duet of his hit "Until I Found You." The collaboration - their first television performance of the song together - brought together two of music's most exciting breakout stars for one memorable performance.

For the performance, LD Grey placed 10 KL FRESNEL 8 FC fixtures on C stands for a vintage Fresnel backdrop look. "I just love a Fresnel and feel it really personifies light as art. A big Fresnel has this great vintage Hollywood feel," Grey stated, explaining that he originally tried to retrofit a classic 10" Fresnel with LEDs inside to get a color-changing glow but gave up on the idea. "Then I looked at another brand that has a similar light to the KL Fresnel but comes in a blue and silver casing. This wouldn't have worked for us as we wanted a clean, vintage feel," he says. "When my friends at Volt Lites told me about the KL FRESNEL 8 FC and I saw the beautiful black casing and the rich color mixing, I knew this was the direction we needed to go."

Ideal for broadcast applications that require high-quality, high-output soft light, the KL FRESNEL 8 FC employs a 500W RGBMA LED engine (CRI 92) to emit a beautifully diffused wash of full-spectrum light that includes dynamic whites. Grey says the feature of the fixture that was most important in achieving the look for Sanchez's performance was the "big beautiful lens that just gets soaked with color and light. We could glow it and keep it in bokeh as an art piece or blast them down the camera bathing the background in light and getting nice bloom on the camera."

Sanchez's "Late Late Show" performance was the designer's first time using Elation's KL FRESNEL series but, he states, "it certainly won't be my last." He goes on to say that it is the company's penchant for listening to the needs of the market that has resulted in useful products like the KL FRESNEL. "Elation has really made impressive strides by bringing in and promoting some key folks from our industry like Matthias Hinrichs, Eric Loader and John Dunn. They get our business and they get the people in it. We're a finicky, demanding lot who operate in a little niche industry and Elation's willingness to listen to our needs and preferences has resulted in the creation of some exceptional products."

The February appearance was one of two "Late Late Show" performances that Grey lit for Sanchez, along with a performance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." The appearances continue a busy season for Sanchez who recently unveiled a new single "Evangeline" and is playing sold-out shows across the U.S.