Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

Netflix, 2018 to 2020

On the weekly topical comedy show Patriot Act, the set was the show. Comedian Hasan Minhaj delivered every episode standing inside a stage built from LED screens, and the graphics on those screens carried the argument as much as the script did. Marc Janowitz designed the set, including the custom shapes of its LED walls and floor, and creative director Michelle Higa Fox established the signature look of what played on them.

Comedy is all about timing, and so is running media for it. Every taping was a carefully choreographed ballet, with the assistant director calling each beat of the script and the graphics landing on the word. The show taped in front of a live audience, and Hasan played to the room, holding for a laugh or reacting to the crowd in the moment, so the screens had to hold and react with him. Scripts changed constantly, sometimes right up to the taping. The production needed confidence that every rewrite would reach the screens and every cue would land.

upLIGHT’s contribution

upLIGHT programmed and ran the Disguise media server system that drove the entire set, high-resolution and low-resolution LED together, for every episode taped in the studio. We worked within a system designed by Rodd McLaughlin and side by side with the show’s producer, Jaimie Van Dyke, and its graphics team. We controlled Disguise from a grandMA2 lighting console using Sockpuppet, a choice made for speed and flexibility: it let us rebuild and reorder cues as fast as the writers could rewrite, and gave us split-second control during the show. A second Disguise system ran a pre-visualization studio upstairs, where the graphics producers could plan each episode on a virtual version of the set, and at taping time it came online over the building’s network as the live backup. In 2019 the show’s motion design won the Emmy for Outstanding Motion Design, and our lead programmer received a certificate from the Television Academy recognizing that contribution.