CYC curtain wash

[Oboeoboe]

Hi

My name is Ed Richards. I am a full time music educator and a part time Tech Director at a community theater in Williamsport, PA. I am also somewhat of a computer geek so I think that is why I was asked to fill the Tech Director position at the theater. We are fortunate to have a decent lighting system: ETC Express 48/96 board, 96 channels of electrics at 2000 watts each. And a decent sound system: Mackie 32 channel mixer, 5 crown amplifiers, surround sound, etc.

We recently installed a 20' by 20' cyc curtain and I am looking for a way to wash the curtain with lights which can change colors during the performance. We are currently using 6 cyc lamps and are limited to using one color gel per performance. Our budget is limited so I am considering purchasing some used colorkinetics Color Blast 12 units so that I could change colors during the show. Anyone had any experience with these units ? How many would I need to wash a 20' by 20' curtain with decent color saturation ? Any other suggestions ?

Thanks

[DaveySimps]

Welcome Ed. Glad to have you here. I have moved your thread to the lighting forum, so it can get some better traffic. Not all members regularly read the New Member Board. Please do a search, if you have not already done so, for Colorkinetics related threads. There had been lots of talk about them.

In brief, I do not think they are the way to go for you, based on the little info you provided. I would recommend more cyc light units. You would need many of the Colorkinetics units to achieve what you are looking for, which really drives up the cost to do what you are looking to do tremendously, even with used fixtures. It would be more tedious to get a clean vibrant wash with them, compared to traditional cyc units. Also, controll of LED fixtures via an Express board is possible, but tricky to do compared to a more modern board. This will increase your tech time. Just a couple of quick items I wanted to mention.

Thanks for taking time to introduce yourself. Enjoy CB!

~Dave

[icewolf08]

LEDs can be a great solution, but they are very expensive when you purchase units that are worth using. You will find that often conventional cyc lights like the L&E Broad Cyc, the Selecon Hui and Aroura lines, and the Altman Sky Cyc cost much less and provide better output and coverage. With a three or four cell conventional cyc unit you can achieve basic RGB or RGBA color mixing, or use any combination of colors you choose. Most of these manufacturers offer many fixture configurations from single units to linear bars to stacked quads.

The distance you have between your cyc and the lighting position you intend to hang the fixtures on will determine how many fixtures you need. The general rule of thumb is that for every foot of distance between the cyc and the lights should be the minimum distance between the centers of the lights. So, if your cyc is 10 feet from the lights you need them on 10 foot centers which means you probably want 3 units for even coverage of a 20 foot cyc.

You may also want to consider a ground row in addition to hanging cyc fixtures. This allows you another dimension fo color mixing between top and bottom, and also will give you the most even coverage you can get.