cyc lights in a tight space

I

Infinidean

Member
We got a new theatre at the college where I work, and I like most things about it, BUT the stage has very little depth which causes all kinds of problems when trying to light the cyc. If we have up any sort of set upstage the distance between the set and the cyc is usually 2-4 feet. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to evenly light a 16' cyc with so little throw distance? Here's an example of our problem; our current production's set is a row of 10' columns with a piece across the top of them. It sits 3 feet from the cyc. Between the 8 columns the cyc is pretty much seen the whole width of the stage, but we can't hang or set any of our instruments far enough away to light it well with out getting shadows from the columns. From the reading I've done most cyc lights need to be 6-8 feet from the cyc in order to attain optimum coverage. Is there something that works in 2-4 feet?
thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
Striplights are ideal for just this purpose. You can go with a standard R40 strip, or ETC's Source Four MultiPAR, or one of many types of LED striplight. L&E still makes a good selection of different types of strips. You will need a solid line of striplights as wide as the visible cyc area.
 
We've tried strip lights, and they work great if all we want is a 1 color wash. The problem with strip lights arises when we want to do a 3 color wash. The strips don't give even coverage. It is especially noticeable at the very top and bottom of the cyc where there are dark spots between the lamps.
 
Thats where LED stiplights come in handy. You can make the entire stip one color. Depending on your budget, some ETC stips would be very nice, and others here have seen other models more extensively than myself.
 
First off, traditional cyc fixtures will work fine from 2-3 feet, you just need more of them. If you are lighting from the floor, you might consider a row of Altman Ground Cyc fixtures (or ground cyc's from any manufacturer). You will want to get enough fixtures to go all the way across the width of the drop. When you put color in you will want to use something like R104 to spread the light horizontally which will help your blending issues. You may still see some scalloping at the bottom of the cyc, but it should be far better looking than your R40s.

If you have the space to hang units, you can take the same approach with the same fixtures (just make sure you orient them correctly) or you can use traditional sky cycs. The rule of thumb for sky cyc fixtures is that you space them evenly with the distance between each unit (center to center) equal to the distance the position is from the cyc. Again you will probably want to use R104 for blending.
 
We light a 30'x40' (approx.) cyc with only about 2' of throw. We have a ground row and a row in the air, with Altman cyc lights running the whole way across on top and bottom. You notice a bit of color separation (when mixing) at the top and bottom but it's nothing major.

We recently got a demo of Altman's spectra-cyc too, and loved that. If you have it in your budget to get a bunch, that'd be a great way to prevent concerns of color mixing and all that sort of thing.
 
Traditional cyc units using double ended lamps have "cells" - I.E. the individual lamp and color, on roughly 9" centers. One problem with attempting to use them close to a drop/cyc is the cells are not far enough away from the surface to allow blending of colors from adjacent cells. In general, you want to be 6 or more ft. from the drop to get effective coverage.

A method we use on a 30x50 ft. white cyc, @ 2'6" from the cyc, is MR16 striplights, ours from L&E - Low Voltage Striplights

We use a 6'-3", 3 circuit strips, 6 across with flood lamps @ 75watts and 6 more underhung below the flood fixtures, witrh spot lamp @75watts, to get a 3 color even wash. We add Rosco 104 or Lee 228 diffusion, or use the Rosco 124-125-126 & 127 series filters to get diffusion L to R. This has been a very good method for us for 20 years now.

In your situation, I would recommend trying a set of single 6ft (3 color) or 8 ft (4 color) strips, as many as you need, and play with assorted linear diffusions and trim heights, to get the best results. Note that a single strips circuit has 10 lamps, MR16 low voltage type, in either 50w or 75w @ 12volts. The wattage draw is 750 per strip, per color. So to do a 40 ft. cyc, I would use either 6x6ft strips in 3 colors and provide 6 circuits @ 2400 watts, or 8 circuits if doing 4 colors.

Steve B.
 
I have the exact same problem. Our space is tiny, and set designers are always giving me a cyc but absolutely no space to light it. In our current running production, There is less than 2 feet between the cyc and the closest DS piece of scenery.

Obviously, at that distance, the different colors in a striplight don't have enough space to blend before they hit the cyc. There isn't anything you can do about that except give up on mixing and just pick three (or four) colos that specifically work for your production, and use them one at a time. Silks (like R104) will help blend the beams.

It helps to have another set of lights at the top, because when you only have to cover the bottom half of the cyc with your ground row, you can move it further back and make the angle more shallow. So instead of trying to scrape upwards, you hit it from the front, and the throw distance is greater so you get better blending. Then your set of strips (or Sky Cycs, or whatever) above can fill in the top half.

It may be impossible for you to ever get a perfect color wash given your limitations, but that shouldn't discourage you. There are plenty of other things you can do to a cyc. At school our cyc was so wrinkled and dirty that a plain wash was out of the question. I learned to use patterns, which can look really awesome.
 
Thanks everyone for the thoughts.

No, we don't have a budget for LED strips. Can't wait until LED lights are affordable. The savings in AC alone will be amazing.

I hadn't thought about picking a couple of colors and not trying to blend. I may bring that up at our next production meeting. We're a small school, and everyone wears multiple hats, but none of us are that well versed in lighting.

Has anyone tried tilting the cyc in order to get better coverage in a tight area? Does it help?
 
I'm not sure how much tilting the cyc would help, but it would be an interesting experiment.

I abandoned RGB cyclight mixing several years ago in favor of picking discrete colors I wanted (and sometimes mixing a couple of those). The high school space I normally light is a lousy space, with the upstage electric (of the two permanent electrics) two whole feet away. R40 strips sucked on that. I finally wised up and figured out that I could use fixtures on a farther-away lineset, something like 6 feet in my case, to light it with T3s -- and the difference was like night and day.

It would be interesting to try to light it from booms instead of, or perhaps in addition to, overhead and/or groundrow positions.

Deck-mounted T3s behind the columns might also be worth a try to see how they would fill in.
 
Although I am a huge champion of LED technology I think it has a few years yet to mature and the price to keep coming down, especially in the 2-3 watt LED sources.

Tilting your cyc is an interesting idea but I've been there and it doesn't work. Not only that but you are putting a lot of extra wear and tear on an expensive piece of fabric that may be there for 20 years.

When it comes to drops, cycs, etc. I am still old school about striplights. They are harder to focus just right but once you master the skill you have it. Some of my opinion comes from dealing with massive scenery shows where I am lucky to squeeze out a lineset to hang lights on. The lack of real estate in the air has made me a grudging fan of striplights. Believe me, I'll take a cyc light any day, but when space is very limited, that option doesn't work well. Not only do cyc lights need distance from the cyc, they occupy a pretty substantial portion of airspace above the stage. Count on at least 18" upstage and downstage of your electrics batten to accommodate them. If you will consistently have less that 4 feet of depth to your cyc then cyc lights are not a viable option.

R104 has been mentioned as a blending frost. I'd add to the Lee 228, about 1/3 the effect of R104. In PAR-56 and PAR-64 strips I have also used the R105 and R106 Tough Spun line.

A couple suggestions were made to have strips for the bottom of your cyc. My vote is yes, whenever possible. You gain so much design flexibility if you have that option. The preciously mentioned GroundCycs are a good choice as are old fashioned R40 strips. Of the two choices I'd go GroundCycs first if you have the circuits to handle it.
 
The back wall is a mess. No chance of painting it. I worked in a small space in Vienna, Austria where that's what we did, and it worked well.

We don't have a rear screen wide enough for the space, although I'll keep that in mind for times we only need to light outside a window or two.

The space is truly a black box, but the Director of the Theatre Dept has it almost permanently set up as a faux proscenium. There are catwalk positions to hang from, and where needed, we dead hang pipes and run cable. I point all this out to say that normally real estate above the stage isn't a problem.

Again, I appreciate all the comments.
 
naharnahekim said:
You also might want to try back lighting the the cyc with a bounce. You may need to get rear projection screen, or something similar (any seamless semi opaque medium will do) if your cyc doesn't allow for a lot of bleed through.
Click to expand...

You could increase your throw distance by aiming your cyc lights up or forward and bouncing off of a mylar or even aluminum foil reflector to front light. Rosco makes heat-shrink mirror that can be applied to a frame. It gives you a longer throw distance and some diffusion which will help with the blending. It might even be possible to do some sort of direct/reflected split so the cyc lights directly light the bottom of the cyc and hit the top with reflected light, but that would require a mirror part way in the beam reflecting light off a second mirror, and a lot of finicky rigging.

If the budget allows it would be cheaper to rent the right instrument for the job rather than implementing my suggestion.
 
For the record, I was talking about tilting the striplight, not the cyc. I don't think that would really help.

Another thought: It's not always bad that colors from your cyc lights don't perfectly mix. I've done shows in my time where this happened and I went: "Oh, hey, that doesn't look bad" and kept it. I guess it depends on the colors you're using and the expected level of visual realism in the production. Maybe sometimes having a more mottled look could serve you well, especially because contrasting colors tend to "fight" eachother, giving the cyc some movement and vibrancy.

I guess my point is, before you go rigging up any giant mirrors, look for a way to turn your disadvantages into a chance to try different things that might work just as well. I work in a successful professional regional theatre, and I have no fly space, no wing space, and our stage is like 40 x 20 ft. Our cyc is basically a giant bedsheet stapled to the back wall. The theatre world is full of tiny, terribly equipped spaces. It's not something you can really escape, so it's something you should get used to working with. It's not bad, you just have to get a little creative.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Clubitz
Looking for a new cyc light
Replies
11
Views
2K
EdSavoie
EdSavoie
cass24
CYC’s flickering — please help!!
Replies
3
Views
944
Les
Les
RegiK
Lights Turning Off Suddenly On Element 2 Board
Replies
9
Views
376
RickR
RickR
Rip Van Winkle
Projected backdrops on a multipurpose stage
Replies
2
Views
1K
ship
S
S
Altman LED Fixtures intermittent failure
Replies
9
Views
577
TimMc
TimMc

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back