Circus event led him to meet the Much Music team and soon after he joined their Specials Department as a lighting technician and camera operator . Seven years later , Nadon began his freelance career at The Hour on CBC . He ’ s been the Founder and President of InFrame designs since 2006 .
“ We ’ d been talking to CTV , they reached out to us to work with them on this new show ,” explains Nadon to Professional Lighting & Production . “ They called us and said ‘ This is a game show . We want it to look fancy . We want it to be new . We want it to be fresh ,’ and we ’ re very lucky to be called and got on board to work on it with them .”
Nadon says that Battle of the Generations ’ aim of a cross generational appeal was a fun challenge . “ It ’ s such a fun concept that needs to appeal to multiple generations [ so ] that affects design directly because you want somebody younger to watch this and think ‘ this is a show for me ’ and you want somebody who ’ s been around longer to watch the show and think , ‘ no , this is a show for me .’ We kind of wanted that debate between the Gen Z , Millennial , Generation X , and Baby Boomer . A Gen Z is watching the show and saying , ‘ this looks like a modern new show ’ and then have a boomer watch it and go ‘ no this looks like a show from the 70s .’ So , there ’ s actually a ton of design cues in the show that are meant
to make you think that this is a show that has retro vibes to it but it also is a show that looks contemporary and uses both colour and gradients . So , we really try to combine all of those sorts of design cues , the retro with the new and fresh .”
Starting at Much Music as an intern in 1999 , Shawn Forbes ’ credits include Big Brother Canada , The Juno Awards and Canada ’ s Next Top Model .
“ The concept was having the distinct colours for the four generations to give them their own home base ,” elaborates Forbes . “ You have these stripes , those four , different colours : blue , lavender , yellow , and pink . And so having that colour in the podium lighting and then the wedge of flooring that the contestants were standing on having that match their generations in relation to the game board , which had all the running scores for [ each generation ] in their own appropriate colour so you can kind of tie that all together . The real anchor in the concept of the lighting is having those four colours and then having them promulgate through the set and making sure that they were in most of the shots , whether we ’ re looking at the contestants ’ podiums , or we ’ re looking at the game board with the video screen . The tricky part with all that of course , is trying to make these different light sources the same colour .”
A unique aspect of the show ’ s design is its video wall . “ What we wanted is this big , dominating character on the show , and that ’ s why it ’ s so big and takes up half the set ,” explains Nadon . “ It ’ s this dominating force that is the thing we ’ re all there to contribute to . And then we get to benefit from at the end . So , it needed to be a big character . But to have this big cube of video on the corner of the set isn ’ t very interesting . How do we make it more interesting ? Well , of course there ’ s the concept of a time capsule and it being stuck inside a wall and being revealed like we ’ ve discovered this thing . So , then we started thinking about the old lath and plaster , where you had all these strips of wood on a wall and that ’ s how walls were made . And so those stripes of colour are actually a riff on old plaster lathing : they ’ re out and they ’ re bent open . So , we ’ ve kind of broken open the corner of this wall , and we ’ ve discovered this amazing vault inside , [ but those ] stripes have to be in a certain scale . They can ’ t be one inch high anymore . They have to be 20 inches . And of course , if they ’ re 20 inches high , then they need to be at least 18 inches deep . Well , now that ’ s a monstrous thing to create . And not only that , but how do we stack them up , so they get to 30 feet at the top ? And then once we do that , how do we put those in front of a video wall where between
CREATIVE DIRECTOR ALEX NADON
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