There is no shortage of glitz at the red-carpet festivities that precede the Premios Los Nuestro Awards. Year after year, many of Latin Music's biggest stars dazzle the assembled crowd, as well as a large TV audience, with outfits that surprise and delight with their bold color combinations and stylistic flourishes.

The 2023 edition of the event, which took place on February 23 and was broadcast live on Univision, didn't disappoint. From Alejandra Espinoza's stunning black and fuchsia dress with a large flower neckline, to Carlos Rivera's intense lime-green Valentino designed suit, this year's ceremony celebrated fashion at its finest.

Accenting the stars and their stylish outfits, while enhancing the aura of both, was a vividly colorful and carefully planned Rene Garcia and Chris Fernandez lighting design. Using lighting from east and west trusses, the two designers created a distinctive "pink carpet wash" on the runway, while also using multi-level lights from their high trim back wall to create bold looks for the camera and live spectators.



Helping this accomplish this were over 260 CHAUVET Professional fixtures supplied by 4Wall Entertainment.  Included in this collection were 27 Color STRIKE M motorized strobes. Positioned horizontally on the curved backdrop's top, and vertically along its truss columns, the IP65 rated fixture filled a variety of roles.

"The main purpose of the Color STRIKE M was to create hand-crafted looks on stage," said Fernandez. "We love to use every last ounce out of those fixtures' pixel by pixel. At moments they can drive a song with high energy with the thin LED white array or bring lots of power and color with the color plate array. However, at other times both modules are used at the same time, or we can dial it back showcasing a very stripped-down look with just 4 pixels emitting light as if we are looking at stars in the night sky."

Working with the Color STRIKE M units to create a visually captivating backdrop were 12 COLORado PXL Bar 16 motorized tilting batten. "These fixtures created some nice camera candy for the performances on stage," said Garcia. "We had two separate key light settings to make the transition from daylight to nighttime easier."

Also making it easier to create a smooth show was the design team's preplanning. "Usually on these types of TV shows we hardly ever busk, a lot of the programming is done during the prep days leading up," said Fernandez. "We program according to what the run of the show will look like. I always try to use a time code if available. It is a great tool to help make our musical recordings very tight and "hand-crafted" cueing-wise. We have a dedicated playback engineer named Armando (Mandy) Castro III who always does an awesome job organizing and prepping those timecode files, so we are good to go days ahead of the tapings."



Speaking of the preparation that goes into lighting this event, Garcia noted: "The Creative team of Paul, Jerry, and their team at the House of Sam always do an amazing job of costume design and content, so we go for colors within the palette that work well for the cameras and meet their overall setting for that specific artist."

Ensuring that those costumes looked great live and on camera were the rig's 62 Maverick Storm 1 Washes. fixtures.  These high output RGBW fixtures lined both sides of the runway, to provide an engaging wash as well as even key light. "They had great color rendering for a 4800 Kelvin look," said Garcia. "They also have a very effective zoom range and field angle."

Further enhancing the looks on camera were the soft white light from the rig's onAir Panel 2 IP and the key from the Ovation E-260WW ellipsoidal. While these fixtures ensured that the talent looked good on camera, a collection of COLORado and WELL Fit adding color to the surroundings, while 20 truss mounted Rogue Outcast 1 Hybrids added a dash of excitement.



In addition to relying on their power-packed rig, Garcia and Fernandez counted on support from an excellent team that included Univision Executive Producer Uji Fulgueira, Noel Duncan, the team at Inner Circle Distribution, Gaffer Jason Uchita, and Bob Suchocki of 4Wall Entertainment.

"A lot of things had to come together to pull this event off with sparkle and style," agreed Garcia and Fernandez - and that was just the sort of thing that was needed on this fashion forward evening in February.