This year’s CMT Music Awards, broadcast on June16th from the Sommet Center in Nashville, boasted an extraordinarily innovative design for a televised live event. Production designer Anne Brahic and lighting designer Allen Branton, whose team also created the video content, provided a video and lighting driven alternative to traditional scenery while embracing the idea of negative space. Branton turned to PRG’s Bad Boy ^TM luminaires to provide strong beam effects and define the performers in his meticulous and minimal lighting design.

Branton had used the Bad Boys two weeks earlier in his design for the MTV Movie Awards. There, they played the role of Hollywood searchlights on the glamorous film-inspired set. “The Bad Boys worked really nicely on the MTV awards because of their smaller size but great intensity,” said Branton. “They were a great tool on the CMTs because they had enough brightness to compete with the video even when they were in various colors. It was a nice counterpoint.” Felix Peralta, lighting director/programmer for the CMTs agreed, saying, “They really provided a big, hard-edge light that could cut through all of the video. And Allen and I really like the 8″ aperture of the Bad Boy. It provides what Allen likes to call the ’shock and awe’.”