Travis Wears
Kansas City-based gaffer and cinematographer Travis Wears has been a behind-the-scenes constant in Chiefs media for years, well before ESPN/Disney+’s “The Kingdom”. Founder of the online community Cine Kit List, Wears brings a deep familiarity with sports storytelling and an owner-operator’s efficiency to every setup. That combination proved essential on the six-part docuseries, which chronicles the Kansas City Chiefs’ six-decade history and culminates in the team’s dramatic 2024 season.
Brought on early in production, Wears served as primary gaffer for many of the series’ most important interviews, working closely with director of photography Thom McCallum. The challenge was access: interviews often took place in cramped facilities or off-site locations, scheduled tightly around players’ demanding in-season routines. “You’re not always sure where you’re going to have access to the players,” Wears explains. “Sometimes it’s a very small room, and you have limited time to make it look good.”
To move quickly without sacrificing quality, Wears relied on a compact, mobile lighting package centered around the DoPchoice Airglow™ paired with a Creamsource Vortex8. The combination allowed him to achieve a soft, controlled key light in situations where a traditional large booklight simply wasn’t possible. “We used the Airglow in these really tight areas where you could never build an 8×8 booklight setup,” he says.
For “The Kingdom”, minimizing direct light was a guiding principle. “We wanted to use direct light as sparingly as possible,” Wears notes. “I’ve been using the Airglow for a year now. It’s a really compact booklight-type modifier, and I love how it gives you your choice of both bounce and diffusions.” Shooting the Vortex8 into the Airglow’s reflector gave the team flexibility to tailor the quality of light by selecting different interior fabrics and front diffusions to suit each location and subject.
That flexibility was especially important given the range of players featured on camera. Wears emphasizes that the goal was always to make the lighting disappear. “Everybody looks a little bit different,” he says. “Your job is to make whoever’s in front of the camera look as good as possible so we can just focus on what they’re saying.”
Beyond its versatility, the Airglow also became a conversation starter on set. “When I bring the Airglow out on set, people are always drawn to it because it’s so striking,” Wears adds. Compact enough for fast-moving interview days yet capable of delivering a flattering, diffuse key, the modifier proved to be a dependable solution throughout the shoot.
By pairing the Airglow with the high-output Creamsource Vortex8, Wears was able to work efficiently under pressure while maintaining a consistent visual language across the series. The resulting interviews feel polished and intentional–quietly supporting the larger story of “The Kingdom” and the people at its center.
Learn more about DoPchoice Airglow Booklight: https://www.dopchoice.com/products/airglow-booklight/
Travis Wears is a Kansas City-based gaffer and cinematographer, and the founder of Cine Kit List, an online community connecting owner-operators and production professionals worldwide.
@traviswears @cinekitlist
