Las Vegas
rockers The Killers played several exciting headline festival shows with Clay
Paky Sharpys, A.leda B-EYEs and SuperSharpys delivering colossal lighting
effects as part of, as The Telegraph describes, ‘a fittingly over-the-top
display of lights, fireworks and explosions.’
Lighting
Designer Steven Douglas specified 36 of the industry-leading fixtures Sharpys,
supplied by NegEarth, after using them extensively on the The Killers’ previous
tours.
“If you’re
looking for something that’s going to be big and impactful, the first thing
that comes to mind is the Clay Paky Sharpy,” says Douglas. “They are the
obvious choice for me as I’ve used them consistently in my designs for the last
two years. They’re great, reliable, compact lights that really pack a punch –
everyone knows how good they are.”
Douglas
rigged the Sharpys to create a huge wall of light behind the band, in place of
where the video screen usually sits. The result was a truly stunning backdrop
of intense brightness and colour, thanks to the Sharpy’s purity of beam and
remarkable output.
“We wanted
to do something different on the festival tour so we went for a look that was
entirely light-focused, and it worked really well,” says Douglas.
Douglas also
specified eight Clay Paky SuperSharpys, after getting to grips with them
earlier in the year as he discusses: “Having heard some fantastic
recommendations for the SuperSharpy I did a little shoot out at Neg Earth in
April. I was really impressed. The fixture had only just been released so I
decided to push to see how many of them we could get for the festival tour,”
says Douglas. “We originally wanted the entire rig to be SuperSharpys, but Clay
Paky’s production timetables got tighter, and because the company likes to
ensure its fixtures are 100% market ready before they are used we only managed
to get a hold of eight.”
Douglas
therefore ended up using the SuperSharpys as part of the onstage floor package,
which was programmed to create beat-perfect and dynamic aerial effects.
“The
SuperSharpy’s output is incredible, and the throw of the beam is huge, which
meant they looked amazing when they came out into the audience,” says Douglas.
The
SuperSharpy is an ACL moving head, featuring a 470 watt, 7,000 K lamp. Its beam
is four times brighter than the Sharpy, allowing its light to reach
never-seen-before mid-air distances.
Douglas
added Twenty-four Clay Paky B-EYEs to complete the floor package, which he used
to wash the stage, band and audience with vibrant throbbing colours. “I love
how you can control and animate the B-EYE’s individual pixels, it’s a really
great tool.” Douglas continues.
The A.leda
B-EYE K20 is an excellent quality wash light, which also works as a beam and
can create spectacular visual effects. It’s capable of generating a pulsating
beam of micro-rays that can be controlled individually, each with its own
colours and shades.
