Lighting Cyc w/Pars

[TupeloTechie]

Once again the school board has refused to buy cyc lights for our PAC. I am needing to light the cyc RGB style, with either 9 or 12 Altman Star-Pars (source 4 par knock offs.) In the past when I have done this I have ended up with a cyc that appears to just have beams of light, and not a nice even spread of light. What is the best diffusion or gel to use to create this effect with pars? The electric is about 5' from the cyc.

[Footer]

How tall is your cyc? How long? I would probably go with cyc silk oriented it whatever way it fills better. Odds are you will need to spread left/right first. Also, I assume you have wide lenses in.

[gafftapegreenia]

Cyc silk, such as R104 works nicely. A heavy diffusion might help was well, possibly an R103 or R111.

[len]

Can you get wider lenses? Can you get more fixtures?

[TupeloTechie]

I have the Wide Beam lenses in them, and I can't use more than 12, the cyc is about 25'(h)x40'(w) as an estimate, if I use the cyc silk, will I also need other diffusion?

There are also (6)2.4kw floor pocket circuits, and I am trying to get floor cyc units, but the district won't get them, they wont even get the right kind of bulb. But I can mount pars on truss placed on the floor.

[Footer]

If you use the silk, just use the silk otherwise you are going to cut your transmisson to nothing. Silk kills it enough by itself. I would try to do 2 colors instead of 3, you might get better coverage. I would get the silk and just try it, and play with it. You might do better with the electric trimmed higher or lower, just try things. You an also get RGB gel with the silk built in (R124-R126). I don't know if they will fit in the star pars, but ETC is now making a XWFL lens that really speads some light out there.

[gafftapegreenia]

Those color-combo silks would help save money.

I just have to ask, have you checked the direction of your lenses?

I actually did a very similar thing today on a cyc of relatively the same size. In my case, I was using three, 3-cell MultiPAR's with WFL lenses. I plan on adding silk but haven't dropped it in yet, as I had to go run a followspot. The lights are on the next pipe just downstage of the cyc, and the pipe is set so that the lights are at the very top of the drop. Lit well enought for the designer's tastes, and thats without the silk spreading the light. If I have time (show opens Thursday) I might add another MultiPAR. So, in your case, where you will have 4 sets of RGB, I think you should be able to get it to cover well and be convincing.

[Kelite]

The Altman Star PAR certainly does throw some serious light, but also eats darker transmission gels for lunch. You may have already experienced this, since it sounds as though you have used this fixture type for your cyc. Are you running with 1k lamps?

[TupeloTechie]

with the 1k lamps they eat any get in about 2 seconds!

even with 575w gels don't last long, and these have 10" frames, so it uses a lot of gel, but its all we have...

[gafftapegreenia]

How about some heat shield?