The Story Behind FrameLight

It’s been a pretty unusual journey.

While working in the UK a gaffer explained something to me on the set of Harry Potter that completely changed the way I looked at light.

It wasn’t just about producing light. It was about the colour of that light, how accurately it represented white, and what that did to skin tones when it was captured on camera.

That was the moment I started to understand that there was a whole technology behind lighting.

I started learning everything I could about the colour of light, colour temperature, spectral quality and how different sources behaved. Before long, I couldn’t walk into a bar, a hotel or someone’s house without looking at the lighting and thinking about how it felt.

Was it warm or cold?

Did people look good under it?

Did the space feel inviting?

Was the lighting helping the architecture, or fighting against it?

It changed the way I looked at the built environment.

I began to realise that architectural lighting, film lighting and theatre lighting actually have much more in common than you might initially think. Gallery lighting adds another dimension to that same thinking — how light interacts with objects, artwork, materials and the people experiencing them.

All of these worlds are ultimately about people.

It’s about making people look good.

It’s about making people feel good.

It’s about creating an environment that changes how you experience a space.

That idea became one of the foundations of FrameLight.

Three very different people

The important part of the FrameLight story.

I’ve been fortunate to have two people close to me throughout my career who have had a huge influence on where we are today.

One of my best friends has spent his career in architectural lighting, while my brother has worked alongside me since very early in my career.

The three of us are very different people.

In fact, we have almost completely different personalities.

Sometimes I’m not entirely sure how we work together as well as we do.

But somehow, it works.

We approach problems differently. We see things differently. We have different strengths, different experiences and, occasionally, very different opinions about how something should be done.

But that difference has become one of our strengths.

Between us, there is a combination of technical thinking, creative thinking, practical experience and an understanding of how lighting actually needs to work in the real world.

We challenge each other.

We occasionally frustrate each other.

But we also complement each other.

And I think that has become part of the DNA of FrameLight.

A team built over decades

That same philosophy extends to the wider FrameLight team.

Although FrameLight itself has only been in business since the end of 2019, many of the people who work here have been part of my working life for far longer than that.

Most of my staff have worked with me for more than a decade.

Some were suppliers to me in previous careers. I knew them from the other side of the business, working with them for years before they eventually became part of our own team.

Others worked for me when I was a manager at previous companies. We built relationships, worked on projects together, solved problems together and, years later, ended up working together again at FrameLight.

And quite a few of the people here are, quite literally, family.

So when we talk about experience, it isn't simply about how long FrameLight has existed.

The experience within the business goes back decades.

There is a huge amount of history, knowledge and trust between the people here.

We know how each other thinks. We know what each other is good at. We know who to call when something goes wrong and, importantly, we know how to get things done.

That continuity is something I’m particularly proud of.

A slightly unusual lighting company

FrameLight is, admittedly, a bit of a strange construction.

We operate in the film world. We operate in television. We work in theatre, galleries and architectural lighting. We design, manufacture, import, install and maintain lighting systems.

At first glance, those worlds might seem quite separate.

To us, they aren’t.

The same thinking applies whether we are lighting a television studio, an airport security area, a theatre, a gallery, a building foyer, a conference space or a high-end home.

It is still about understanding the environment, understanding what the light needs to achieve, and delivering a solution that makes the space work.

FrameLight itself has only been in business since the end of 2019, but the people behind it have spent decades in the industry. Over the past six years, that experience has taken us on a pretty remarkable journey.

We have been involved in designing and delivering lighting systems for nearly all of the major television studios built in Australia during that period.

And then there are the airports.

Who would have guessed that a film lighting company would end up supplying lighting for airports?

Yet today, lights that we helped design are used across airport security environments around Australia. Many of those fixtures are manufactured by us right here in Australia.

That journey has taken us well beyond simply importing and selling lighting equipment.

From importing lights to making them

As the projects became larger and more complex, we started developing and manufacturing more of our own equipment.

That eventually led to the establishment of a manufacturing facility in northern New South Wales.

Today we manufacture stage lighting bars, hoisting systems, monitor mounts, PTZ camera mounts and a growing range of equipment around the lighting and studio environment.

We also get to work on some wonderfully unusual projects.

We’ve designed custom lighting fixtures for high-end homes, including applications where we have mounted $7,000 stones onto one of our fixtures.

We’ve designed oversized pendants in places where, thankfully, for once nobody seemed particularly concerned about the budget.

Those projects are always fun.

But what is particularly exciting for us is seeing our own products moving into new areas.

We have now designed, manufactured and sold our first LED fixture specifically for low-ceiling studios, radio stations, commercial environments, office fit-outs and video-conferencing spaces.

It is a neat, tidy fixture designed to work with track, rail and ceiling systems.

We’re very proud of it.

And hopefully, it is the beginning of something much bigger.

More than a box of lights

So, what is the future for FrameLight?

I don’t think we have a five-year plan written on a whiteboard somewhere telling us exactly where FrameLight will be in five years.

I think our customers will tell us.

One thing we have deliberately tried to do from the beginning is make FrameLight about more than simply supplying boxes of lights.

We provide service.

We provide maintenance.

We help solve problems.

We stay involved.

When we deliver a project, we don’t believe our job is finished when the boxes arrive and the invoice is paid.

We want to make sure the system works, that the client is happy, and that when something inevitably needs attention down the track, there is someone who knows the project and can help.

That is one of the things that has set us apart.

We are one of the relatively few companies that can offer genuinely end-to-end supply.

We are the importer for the majority of the products we sell. We are increasingly the manufacturer of many of the products we supply. We design systems, produce documentation, project manage installations, install and commission equipment, and provide ongoing maintenance and support.

We work alongside AV contractors, electrical consultants, electrical contractors and builders to help them deliver solutions for their clients.

And, importantly, we keep the end client in mind throughout that process.

The right solution isn't necessarily the most expensive one.

It is the one that delivers the right result, within the budget, and achieves the image, functionality and experience the client is looking for.

That has always been important to us.

Where to next?

I don’t think anyone can say exactly where FrameLight will end up.

And perhaps that’s a good thing.

What started with film, television, theatre and architectural lighting has grown into manufacturing, studio integration, gallery lighting, airports, theatres, AV rooms, convention centres, building foyers and commercial environments.

And there are plenty of places we haven’t thought about yet.

That is probably what makes it interesting.

We’re still learning.

We’re still designing.

We’re still building things.

And we’re still fascinated by light.

After more than 20 years in the industry, I still walk into a room and look at the lighting first.

I suppose that probably isn’t going to change.

Maybe that’s what happens when you spend enough of your life thinking about light.

It stops being something you simply sell.

You start seeing the world through it.

And if FrameLight can continue bringing together the technology, engineering and experience of the film, television, theatre, gallery and architectural lighting worlds to create environments where people look better, feel better and experience spaces differently, then I think we’ll have a pretty exciting future ahead of us.

We’ve been here to deliver that for our clients so far.

We’ve never let them down.

And we don’t intend to start now.