Showlight prides itself on the diversity of its speaker topics, which cover aspects of lighting from a broad spectrum of different disciplines. This month, the organisers are focussing on cinematography, a genre that was well represented in 2025 with presentations from the highest number of film and television LDs to date, including Thierry Goron, M. Thierry Arbogast AFC, and David Mullen ASC, who was recently awarded the ASC Career Achievement in Television Award.
The latest video drop includes Roger Simonsz and Peter Macdonald. Roger Simonsz BSC: Schrödinger’s dimmer; controlling the uncontrollable. A graduate, and now fellow, of Rose Bruford college, Roger has been part of Showlight since 2005. In a career that has taken him to 30 different countries – sometimes working in languages he didn’t understand, his award-winning work as a lighting designer, cinematographer, writer and director in many different genres has been seen on stage and screens across the world.
Of his presentation on working with light outdoors, he said: “It’s very difficult in film to do the kind of slow lighting changes we do so easily in theatre. Using examples from Engrenages/Spiral as well as Piper we will explore how to achieve control on location, in daylight, while cueing the sun, with the help of Schrödinger’s dimmer.”
Born in the Netherlands, Roger began his career in the UK and now resides in France. He has recently finished working on a new feature film in the south of France, Les Voix Colorées. Peter Macdonald BSC, DGA, DGGB: A Life in Cinema with Peter Macdonald.
We were privileged to host multi award-winning industry veteran, Peter Macdonald, who brought Showlight 2025 to a close with an informal chat in which he shared memories and anecdotes from his life in cinema spanning more than 70 years.
Peter Macdonald worked with director Sir Laurence Olivier on four films as camera operator and got his break on the 1958 film A Night to Remember with cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, with whom he collaborated for the next 25 years as his camera operator (Cabaret, Superman I & II, A Bridge Too Far, Cromwell, Excalibur, Murder on the Orient Express) and with David Watkin (Yentl). Macdonald evolved into a second unit director, (Batman 1 & 4, Empire Strikes Back, the first four Harry Potters, Guardians of the Galaxy, Wolverine, The Bourne Ultimatum), and then cinematographer, director and producer. Today, Macdonald reads a lot of scripts, works as Advisor and Consultant, Producer and Executive Producer in the U.S., participates on film festival juries in Europe where he mentors young filmmakers. He is President of Le Rex, his local cinema in Veules les Roses, Normandy.
Peter and his wife Madelyn Most have continued to attend numerous international film, photography and photojournalism festivals, including the BUFF Film Festival where Madelyn worked on the Fipresci Jury. They have visited Roger Simonsz in France and David Mullen the Czech Republic and the UK on the sets of their respective new films. They work with the Art Without Limit Film Festival for children and young adults with special needs, physical and mental disabilities/ handicaps and autism, and will head to Vienna in April to work on the First edition – a new edition – of this event. artwithoutlimit-ks.org
These videos are part of a series of periodic releases, with more Speaker presentation videos going live as we move towards the next Showlight. You too can get a taste of this perennial lighting networking event by viewing our showreel and some of the Speaker presentation videos from 2025 on the Showlight website: www.showlight.org/videos
