Da Costa is one of Germany's leading television lighting designers, and he has worked his creative magic on several high profile TV shows including German Idol. For VOG, he wanted to create a live concert atmosphere in the studio, combined with a high-gloss TV show.

He also aimed to add drama and interest to each of the songs being performed every week and to create individual worlds and spaces for all of the performers. He also sought to create an aesthetic flow and harmony between lighting and video elements, all of which wrapped around Florian Wieder's set design.

For all these demands, Da Costa needed a lighting rig that would give him ultimate flexibility, and again chose Robe to be at the core of this, based on his past successful experiences with the brand.

The 98 ColorSpot 1200E ATs were the backbone of the system. These, together with 98 ColorSpot 2500E ATs, 31 x ColorWash 1200E ATs and 16 x ColorBeam 2500E ATs were all picked for their intensity and power.

"The reliability, light output and colour are excellent." he states, "The movement is also really quick and I really like the smooth dimming of the ColorSpots".

He continues, saying that the ColorBeam 2500E AT delivers an “Extremely bright, strong and punchy” beam light output, while the rotating gobos and prisms are great for building detailed and intricate effects onstage and reaching out to the audience and the frost filter can be used for emulating wash-style beams. VOG also lends itself to a variety of iris and shutter effects .. and once again reinforcing his need to be adaptable.

While the ColorSpots picked out the set architecture, the Washes functioned as audience back-lighters and for sweeping across the set. The ColorBeams were stationed at the back of the stage for maximum impact and funky in-the-face camera shots.

All these fixtures were arranged in over around 700 metres of trussing rigged in the ceiling which formed a pitched roof over the entire studio.

Upstage were 16 vertical truss towers at different heights, and rigged onto these were about 30 Robe ColorSpot 2500s along with other lights and LED fixtures.

The moving lights were operated by Michael Baganz using a grandMA console. The video visuals were programmed and played back by Stephan Flören and the white lights by Uli Weiss.

The show was aired on Thursday nights on Pro7 and on SAT 1’s Friday night prime time.

Da Costa has been using Robe products regularly since 2007, shortly after he was blown away by his first demo of the brand by Robe’s German distributor LMP. Robe is now on the specs of all his major shows.

The lighting equipment for Voice of Germany was supplied by Cologne based rental company, Magic Light & Sound, and the show’s production manager was Matthias Wolf.