When Nike introduced its new Alpha Menace football cleat Lighting Designer Matt Ardine chose Claypaky Scenius and Sharpy fixtures to deliver a real ‘being there’ feeling to a commercial showing how Alpha Menace-wearing players can dodge – wait for it – roller-skating opponents.
Ardine teamed with cinematographer Larkin Seiple to achieve the vision of director Hiro Murai of Doomsday. The shoot took place at CenturyLink Field in Seattle with Volt Lites providing the lighting gear.
Murai was looking for lighting that would “veer from classic stadium lighting up front to a more heightened, stage-like set-up for the ‘roller rink’ moments. The lighting [would] resemble an arena or boxing ring, coming from overhead and keeping the focus where it belongs…on the field,” Murai explains. “This overhead light [would] spill on the crowd, gathered along the boards where the sidelines once were. The lighting [would] stay dramatic with colored/modular lights peppered in to subtly imply the skate rink without devolving into camp.”
Ardine selected 10 Claypaky Scenius and 30 Sharpy fixtures for the commercial. “All the lights were attached to handrails next to seats because we didn’t have enough load in time to hang truss,” he says. “And the available hanging positions in CenturyLink Field weren’t very useful for what we wanted to do. The Sharpys were placed in the 100 and 200 sections to act as beam and flare lights. We used a prism to spread the beam out. Then the Scenius were placed up as high as they could go, without being rigged, in the 300 sections. These were our main backlights to highlight players for specific shots.”
Ardine picked Sharpys for their reputation as “the beam light,” he notes. “My usual go-to lights for this application would be Claypaky Mythos because of their extra versatility with the zoom and beam lens. But we could get about double the quantity of Sharpys because of the price difference, so we opted for quantity over a zoom lens.”
In addition, the lighting director chose Scenius fixtures because he “needed a very powerful backlight that could be zoomed in very narrow. Plus, framing shutters are usually very important when it comes to film-style shoots.”
Eric Androvich was the Lighting Console Programmer for the commercial, Ted Barnes the Rigging Gaffer and Paul Sartain the DMX Technician. Blackline Rigging and Lighting furnished the electrical gear and One Light Balloons the lighting balloons.