Design Cyc Line issues

[finnb5]

Hi,

I'm a student in my high school's tech theatre program, and our spring musical this year is going to be Footloose. My Director wants to keep our cyc lit for effectively the whole show. The issue is, our cyc line is quite frankly mediocre. We are planning on subbing out our green for a deep amber, and the blue for a darker blue but there are several issues.
[Red] [Green] [Blue]
It is being lit by 9 Altman fc-1s purchased in 1998. We use the colors R27 Medium Red, R91 Primary Green, and R80 Primary Blue Respectively. I don't remember the exact dimensions of the Cyc itself, but the risers are probably a little over 6 feet for scale. It is a very tall and narrow space...kind of weird, but here we are.

The colors in the pictures above are pretty realistic and in my opinion, kind of drab. This is because we recently got 3 beautiful Chauvet Colorado 3's, 180 watt rgbw, dmx 8-45 degree zoom, they're my best friends. When aimed at the cyc, they produce a beautiful color with such intensity that our normal cyc line looks like someone put christmas tree lights just under the cyc line. They look pathetic when any other lights are turned on for normal theatre things and in general are just sad. [2 Colorados hitting the cyc with green at full].

In addition to that, there are multiple issues with the color on the cyc. We plan to change out our blue, but here is the most intense blue from the colorado compared with the cyc. My phone makes it look weird, but the LED blue looks so much better in real life. Here is the respective CIE Chromaticity color picker. When I try to make the LEDs look as close to our R80 Cyc as possible, this is the Chromaticity diagram I get, for a generally nasty blue. There is a stark contrast. This is true for the green as well, but I don't have as many photos. I want to put a different gel other than R80 to fix this but I don't know which one to do, I was thinking of R382 Congo Blue that has a chromaticity diagram much resembling that of the LEDs, but I worry that it just won't be bright enough, or the color won't look right etc.

Furthermore, being able to get strong/variable pinks in this show is something that the director and I both really want to achieve but, (and this might change with the Congo blue) whenever we mix the R80 and the R27 together we get a blueberries-in-yogurt super pastel pinky-purple mess, which I think is a result of using additive mixing two not so precise colors. There is a struggle between getting the right, intense, saturate color and getting any punch at all, which is hard to get already.

Additionally, what amber should we use? It seems like R21 Soft Golden amber isn't a bad choice, but we also used R316 Gallo Gold for backlight and I really like it but I don't think it's intense enough. I don't know what to do in that case.

The director has given me about $1000 to work with in addition to our other fixtures. We have 14 Par 56s, 6 6x12s (that is how old they are), 6 6x9s, 3 Star Pars, 12 Cyc units (but only 10 circuits on the cyc line), 3 Shakespeares, 5 fresnels, 3 Colorado 3s, and 1 Chauvet DJ Intimidator 355z IRC. The director wants this show to visually blow the audience out of their seats, so he wants to use most/all of the $1000 renting money on getting like 40 pars or something. We are situated in Ohio (for renting), and the cheapest cyc-ish line I can find for 2 weeks that would cover the whole 20 feet of the cyc width, costs about $750. Not ideal. I also don't want to aim the Colorados at the cyc because then 1. there is one less to work with for doing washes, and 2. it looks radial when you only aim one at the cyc, and it just looks wrong. I don't know how to explain it, but it just looks wrong.


TL;DR
Issue 1. Cyc does not punch
Issue 2. Blue sucks
Issue 3. What amber do I use?
Issue 4. Pink Sucks
What do we do????



I want the show to look like this. I realize we have far tighter a production budget than they do, but that is my goal.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Whats causing the shadow line at the top? Is there a border between cyc electrics and cyc?

I think with some reaiming and perhaps repositioning you could get a better wash - more even top to bottom.

I have not designed lights for a production in quite a while - like since Cinemoid was an option - so will leave others to suggest colors.

Obviously a ground row would give you a lot of options visually - distinct color gradation top to bottom.

Random thoughts but you are right that there is room for some improvements.

 

[Ric]

Welcome to the world of lighting design !
Everything is a compromise, and you sometimes have to make tough decisions between 'Vision' and 'Reality'.

Take a step back and have a look at the rest of the show, and the lighting that you'll have for that.
It's easy to concentrate on this one area and find that you've majorly compromised the rest of the stage lighting.
Ask your self & the director:
Are the sets going to be lit?
Are the cast going to be lit, and can you see their faces?.
Are there any special props or areas that need to be highlit?

While the cyc can be a dominating part of the show, it can also be distracting!
You may find you spend all this time and effort on the cyc, it's colours & brightness, and then have to only run it at around 30% in order to balance with the rest of the stage.

 

[derekleffew]

I'd keep the existing cyc light fixtures with R27, R91, R80. Second the better focussing suggestion above. I might rent LED batten type or other LED fixtures to use as a ground row.

Second also the caution about making the show all about the cyc. Trust me--been there, done that. A well-lit backdrop is great, but if it upstages the actors, you've failed as a lighting designer.

 

[JJBerman]

Are you using regular gel or cyc silk gel for the lights?
I believe you can get cyc silk sheets of all colors, otherwise try the rosco 120's as many of those are cyc silk gels.
The reason I ask is the cyc silk gels can help even the wash produced on the cyc.

 

[microstar]

Rent 3 Altman SpectraCyc 100's and per Derek, use as a ground row to get more effects and the vivid colors.

 

[techieman33]

I'll second the cyc silk, Rosco makes it in red, green, blue, amber, and as a standalone that you can use with any other color. Something to remember is that it spreads the light along one axis, so you need to make sure it's put in in the right direction. I run mine with the silk running vertical, giving me a horizontal spread which evens things out quite a bit. Also how far away are your cyc lights from the cyc? Moving them a little further away may help as well.

 

[ALT2870]

We used to use Rosco silks but switched out for diffusion as the silk doesn't mix as well. We use R120 for Red, R121 for Blue, and R122 for Green. Don't go to amber if you can only choose three colors (and based on the fact you have 9 units, I would stick with three) as that ruins your color mixing abilities. We got rid of it sometime ago. With those above colors, you can get some pretty nice color. (The red and blue are nice and deep, plus you get some amazing color in between.

 

[Duncan Milne]

I'd hire some LED cycs for the cyc wash, with a groundrow if needed (depends on height vs what fixtures you get), and make the cyc really zing. You can always turn down the intensity to suit the rest of the stage picture, but if you want bold saturated colours, this is the way to go. And then spend the rest of the money on any extra profiles you need to give a punchy wash, any gobos you need to add texture, and then spend everything left over on more LED wash fixtures to give a strong saturated backlight. I think backlight is often undervalued in contributing to a stunning picture (you can see the value of the strong toplights in your last photo).

And srart working on your school to get rid of the conventional cyc lights entirely and replace them with LED - I like the Philips PLCyc. I gave away our cyc battens a few years ago, haven't missed them.

And send us some photos!