Respected lighting designer Luc Peumans of Painting with Light specified a large number of Alpha Profile 1500 to provide special effects along with even more Alpha Spot HPE 1500, many of which incorporate bespoke made gobos for both projection and masking to prevent spill when projecting onto the set.
Peumans choice was based on the extensive tests he had done last year, while designing the popular Holiday on Ice show: Speed, which will be touring the UK this year. He decided then that Clay Paky fixtures were "the best fixture for the challenging and fast paced environment that is a stage made of ice! They give a lot of output for the wattage; they have excellent projection quality, great frost functions and they are super fast. This makes them the ideal choice for me and for this particular environment. We chose Clay Paky fixtures for their excellent optics and long throw, which makes them great for creating the atmosphere I wanted."
Peumans rig design is Cathedral like. He uses the fixtures in a variety of very clever ways, some of which are quite experimental. "I have five 1500 Profiles that have been converted into partly manual operated follow spots," explains Peumans. "We added two control wheels to change the necessary parameters like maximum intensity and beam size. Over a long distance range it's hard to get the same light intensity on the characters. The manual iris control on the fixture doesn't only control the iris but it also controls the zoom through the console. We wanted to automate this to ensure a consistent light level across the wide playing area."
With a large video backdrop, part of Peumans role was to collaborate with video content designer Jean-Luc Gason to create three-dimensional visual lighting effects that compliment the video world. This is where 300 custom-made gobos came in. Installed in the Alpha Spot HPE 1500s, some replicated images or atmospheric effects within the video content bringing the video environment out onto the ice. "It was an exercise in unity," explains Peumans. "The ice is a big white surface on which you can paint with lights. The ice makes an excellent projection surface that can either blend with the video wall or contrast with it, depending on what we choose to do with the lighting."
(Jim Evans)
