Danish lighting designer Kasper Christiansen of VisuaLies has used Clay Paky Shotlight Washes and Alpha Profile 1500s to delight the fans of pioneering punk band Sort Sol on its recent Danish tour.
“I prefer simple but powerful lighting solutions,” says Christiansen. “The backbone of my rig comprised Clay Paky Shotlights and Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500s and, for a relatively small lamp count, we achieved a really big outcome.”
The Clay Paky luminaires were supplied by AED Rent, Belgium to local Denmark rental operation Victory Tour Productions, which then supplied these and the rest of the lighting equipment for the tour.
Christiansen’s exciting and dynamic concept manipulates almost every characteristic of the Shotlight and Alpha Profile 1500 luminaires to deliver a hard hitting, dramatic design. The striking force of Christiansen’s lighting works hand in glove with Sort Sol’s raw punk style. Featuring plenty of open white and strobe cues, interspersed with deep congo blue and red washes, the lively design is punctuated with tightly focused razor sharp gobos and audience blinders.
“I particularly like the power of the Shotlight especially in combination with its fantastic zoom range,” says Christiansen. “It has allowed me to transition between very thin moving beams to then cover the entire backdrop with a single fixture! The strobe ring offers a new scenographic dimension to rock concert lighting and most importantly it make the process great fun. I also love the speed of the Alpha Profile 1500 zoom, and the explosive effects we can generate when using them as floor backlights. The iris/shutters and razor sharp optics makes needle-thin laser beam effects very easy to achieve. Colour mixing on both luminaires is excellent – in particular the red, which is rich and vibrant, I love that!”
“Some of the best new ideas come from merging two great existing concepts,” says Chief Commercial Officer for Clay Paky Pio Nahum. “The Shotlight Wash does exactly that. Since its launch it has proved itself to be both innovative yet strikingly simple. It’s definitely a fixture lighting designers the world over enjoy using.”
The Clay Paky’s Shotlight Wash was launched at the PLASA tradeshow in 2010. It innovatively combines a 1500W discharge washlight with a 3000W Xenon lamp strobe effect in a single fixture. Comprising two fully integrated 1500W semi-circular strobe lamps, they can be used simultaneously or separately and can strobe at different frequencies concurrently.