Andy Mutton of Lightning Lighting has purchased two Spheriscans, Claypaky’s revolutionary scanner with a modern twist.
The Spheriscan’s pan rotation does not have an end-stop: its mirror goes on turning endlessly beyond 360 degrees, which creates an absolutely original swirling effect.
“When I saw that the Claypaky Spheriscan allows continual rotation of the mirror I thought ‘wow, imagine applying that to some of my work’!” said Andy. “I do a lot of simulated travel in my film and commercial lighting work and trying to program moving lights to swoop to an area, black them out and return to the same spot can be very challenging. The continual pan of the Spheriscan solves that problem.”
Andy’s ‘simulated travel’ work is where he has to replicate light reflections into trains, or sunlight through trees onto cars when they’re driving down a road. He says that the Spheriscans allow him to replicate sunlight or reflections really easily.
“It’s been working really well and they are also waterproof so we can attach them to a boom lift or scissor lift outdoors without having to worry about rain,” added Andy.
The photographs show a promo for Fox Sports being shot within a train carriage. The train carriage was stationary with one Spheriscan mounted on a stand outside the carriage.
“I programmed it to do a continual pan sweeping the whole side of the train carriage at a certain speed,” explained Andy. “We had it running at 120 revs per minute but they can do up to 250 rpm. The train windows were covered in graffiti so you couldn’t see clearly out the windows and that helped the illusion of the train moving.”
Spheriscan is also a powerful effects light capable of adding a new distinctive touch to shows. Andy also used one of his Spheriscans as a centre piece above the DJ on the Beyond the Valley festival stage. Next month he will use two of them on a festival, one mounted upside down on top of the other for an interesting focal point.