In Conversation with Rita Carver
IESNYC President Zachary Pearson initiates conversations with creators and innovators whose work intersects with light in meaningful ways. To keep our community dynamic and fresh, we seek out design professionals who are inspired and curious. Only then can we look towards a future where new ideas and crossdisciplinary communication lead to smoother processes, more shared discoveries, and elevated project experiences.
Rita Kogler Carver
Principal of BearFly Designs LLC
IESNYC: In architectural lighting, we love to kidnap concepts from theater and film to make the built environment a little more exciting. So let's dive into the TV/film side: Elmo's World. Were there particular challenges working with the Sesame Street colors, materials, and saturation?
CARVER: Elmo's World had its own unique challenges, because Sesame Street, which Elmo evolved out of, had been going since the mid-'60s. When it started, they just threw as much light at it as they could to fill in any shadows from the puppeteers. And they still sort of do that today. So we used the setup they were used to for the green screen (or blue screen, red screen, depending on which puppets we were using): a very bright setup with Kino Flos from every angle possible.
When it's just puppets on-screen, the set is way up in the air. The puppeteers are puppeting with their hands straight up. The set is between 6 and 8 ft up, and you're just lighting up top. But then they would bring children into the set, and you're back ducking under the lights and camera like a regular set. All the puppeteers are on their backs scooting around on mechanic dollies.
It's interesting, [the producers] didn’t expect Elmo to look the same on a real set as opposed to the fully animated backgrounds. In front of the green screen, they were expecting a flattened look. That was good, because it was much more interesting to do something three-dimensional with the sets and all that fur.
IESNYC: In such a saturated world, at a time before tunable white, what helped the colors pop?
CARVER: At that time we didn't have a lot of those tools at our disposal. Dichroics were just coming out, and boy, were they expensive. So we pretty much left most things clear, and let the furs speak for themselves. They were not subtle colors, because they were teaching kids colors. We were just using tungsten-halogen lights, at the high end of their dimmers so they weren't getting yellowed out.
Training for the next job
IESNYC: Did any of that carry over to The Montel Williams Show, which earned you a Daytime Emmy nomination as lighting director?
CARVER: Montel was more akin to my work at ABC News. There were six cameras on that show, and he had to look his best from every angle. I came on the show after he was already ill. There were days when you could just tell he wasn't feeling well, and, between makeup and lighting, we always tried to maintain his appearance. That became the real challenge.
The guests were varied in dress and skin tones (same as Elmo's World) so you couldn’t gel the keylight for every guest. It had to be something for everyone on a single rig. I was on the show for 7 years, and they would always throw something new at you at the last minute. We couldn’t afford the new moving lights, we only had Puppeteers: a device that goes onto the yoke of a Leko and tilts up and down via DMX. That's all it did. So if we had someone way taller or way shorter in the seat next to Montel, we could adjust a key light for them. But that was it.
My work at ABC News really prepped me to do a talk show. It sounds bizarre, but everything trains you for the next job… if you're lucky.
IESNYC: You earned a Team Emmy for the Sydney Olympics, designing NBC's on-site broadcast studios.
CARVER: I was responsible for one of the three main NBC studios. Between them we were on the air 24/7, and each studio had its own lighting designer doing 8 hour shifts. And then stand-ups at the various venues… It was crazy, but we knew we were doing something amazing.
Everything (sets, lights, dimmers) was literally shipped over to Sydney. It left a month before we did, on a boat, so our crew had to have everything prepped a month ahead of time. Then we had to deal with the voltage conversion. We had two sets of electricians, ours and theirs, working together to make sure everything worked. And we didn't convert every instrument we brought; we converted as needed. So when we suddenly needed an extra dimmer pack, it had to go through that same two-step conversion.
IESNYC: Was there a big mock-up before you shipped it all?
CARVER: No. Everything was tested before it shipped, but not on the set. Thank God, I'm a praying woman.
The look of the technology
IESNYC: Let's turn to the stage, to your long relationship with Ain't Misbehavin' across so many productions. Were there things on your wishlist that technology delivered by the next revival, or were you trying to maintain a look as one of its throughlines?
CARVER: That's interesting. Pat Collins (rest her soul) and I worked on that production over so many years. She started out with [automatic] rotating color wheels, and they were visible to the audience on truss towers and ladders in the wings. They were a visible element. When we couldn't get color wheels anymore, we created a similar look through other means, because there's something about the period of Ain't Misbehavin'. You could totally do moving lights and flash, but I wanted that nostalgia.
Editor’s Note: A rotating color wheel was a disk with 3-inch holes around the perimeter that held interchangeable gels or dichroic filters. The original gadget was manually rotated to change the color filter on source during a production, but later models were automated.
IESNYC: We see the same thing in hospitality: a nostalgia for a form factor or a source, like an LED filament lamp, even when the technology has moved on.
You’ve also worked on the built side: the infrastructure for the Time Warner Center, Bloomberg's world headquarters, ABC/Disney's Times Square Studio...
CARVER: Times Square Studio was interesting because we did the infrastructure and then the broadcast lighting for the 24 hr changing of the millennium. I was there, behind bulletproof glass on New Year's Eve into 2000.
The front of the building is this big set of curves, so we did the grid in all black, so it's not a visual element. But then where’s your centerline on something that's curved like that? That took a while to figure out. And because of the glazing, the public could see everything so the cabling had to be pristine. Everything became a design decision: [for instance] how we oriented the raceways became a choice. Jane Head was the lighting lead on that, and I was her second, still learning.
Design rules
IESNYC: Your book, Stagecraft Fundamentals, has kept pace with the technology through new editions. As stage lighting develops, and architectural lighting keeps borrowing from it, where are the opportunities, and where are the pitfalls?
CARVER: As the technologies continue to evolve, I think that's the most exciting part of lighting.
But if young designers are not careful, they will fall for the eye candy without truly understanding how and why to use it. Our discussion of Ain't Misbehavin': there's a reason to not put moving lights on those side ladders. “Just because you can doesn't mean you should” is one of my favorite phrases. Good salesmen can teach you exactly what the technology can do. But you have to interpret that into what it can do for you.
The changing world of events venues
IESNYC: That theatrical expectation is showing up everywhere now: museums, hospitality outdoors. Audiences are coming to expect a certain level of immersive production, and you're seeing it from the events side.
CARVER: My husband and I run a business now that does lighting and decor for special events. It’s primarily weddings, but we do parties, fundraisers, and galas. We find that the venues are wanting more production infrastructure. They often come to us to specify and install permanently. But then we no longer have that rental opportunity.
We put in a set of beautiful string lights that come out like a canopy from a barn, and it's an effect we did often at that venue. They wanted to offer all their clients that option, and suddenly they're getting more bookings because they have it available. Everyone with a venue is looking to heighten their offering. From my point of view as a vendor, that's a good thing… as long as what they put in is quality and controllable.
IESNYC: You've gone from network TV, Broadway, and the Olympics to weddings in the Hudson Valley. How do you like doing local events?
CARVER: Love it!
IESNYC: Why?
CARVER: Because it makes us part of the local community. We're in New Lebanon, right on the Massachusetts border, but still in New York. We work anywhere – in the Catskills, in the Berkshires – but it's much nicer to work in the area. First, we can drive there. And we feel like we’re having an impact on the local economy by hiring local labor and helping celebrate local events. That's important to us.
Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
