When Andrew Veitch was planning his lighting design for the NRL Footy Show Grand Final he stumbled upon the brand new Clay Paky Supersharpy and was totally blown away!
Supersharpy is an ACL beam type moving head featuring a 470 watt, 7,800 K lamp. Its light beam is three times brighter than a Sharpy, and the light reaches never-seen-before mid-air distances, making the Supersharpy the first low-wattage beam light that can really challenge a searchlight.
“Paul Collison (lighting director) and I were doing two days of programming at Show Technology when we were shown the Supersharpy and asked if we could have their two demo models on the show,” he explained. “The guys said yes and we were delighted even though we didn’t get them until the day before and didn’t know where to put them!”
Andrew, PC and Stuart Anderson (Technical Production Manager) decided to place the Supersharpys front of stage by the centre steps.
“PC was fantastic, he just threw them into the mix and away we went,” said Andrew. “They are unbelievably punchy and a fantastic arena light. When we were trying them out at Show Technology, we found that if you zoom them right down you could actually get the beam small enough to go through the hole created by pressing your thumb and first finger together! Pretty impressive.”
Andrew also had eight Clay Paky A.Leda B-Eyes on the B-stage where quite a lot of the night’s action took place.
“I got some great effects out of them,” he commented. “Any quirky thing a light can do for television is great to try make things look a bit different. The macros built into them are great for this. Plus they are so punchy and have lovely colours.”
