Emmy Stand

An old coworker from my club days won an Emmy. He asked for a custom display, so I scaled ballet lighting principles down to a desktop rig. The stand uses three boom towers per side that arch from downstage to upstage, plus angled wall washers recessed along the outer edges. A dual-material film strip lines the bottom for diffusion and masking.

The curved backdrop was too large for a single print. I built it in modular sections and turned the seams into an exaggerated surface texture. When I set the statue on the pedestal, the gold finish mirrored the light sources instead of absorbing them. The metal warped the reflections.

Packing 512 LEDs into closed plastic is basically building a slow toaster. To keep the enclosure from melting from the inside out, the one rule was power management. I locked the current limit to three amps before I ever turned it on.