Light Minds Think Alike

Selador Vivid Fire and Ice: a designer turned from skeptic to fan

Lighting Designer and Guest Blogger Chris Rynne talks about his first experience using the newest members of the Selador Series of LED fixtures, Fire and Ice:

Last year, I was in a conversation with David Lincecum, marketing manager for ETC, and in that conversation I mentioned that I’d be in Madison, Wisconsin, (home of ETC) this April to design lighting for the Madison Opera’s production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Overture Center for the Arts. When I mentioned the show, he offered me an opportunity that some would not refuse, but that I had to think about. He offered me the use of 30 brand new Selador Ice and Fire fixtures to use in my plot. The caveat was that I’d need to use them as real full-stage lighting, not for lighting sky drops or set pieces. For those of you that aren’t familiar with ETC’s Selador line of fixtures, they are a family of high-quality color-mixing LED units (using red, green, blue, indigo, red-orange, cyan, and amber for much richer color-palette capabilities than are available through an RGB fixture) for stage use, and the Fire and Ice units are a new sub-line that each use only five colors and are tuned toward the red and blue ranges.  

Getting back to my reluctance to immediately take David up on his offer…. I just wasn’t sure that these fixtures would do the job that I’d been using 750W PARs to do for the last 15 years of my design career. So, ETC sent me a couple of samples to play with and I put them up against my beloved PARs with color filters. It took me a couple hours of reviewing literature, specs, photometrics, and feedback, as well as going back into my garage a few different nights and blasting my neighbor’s garage door across the street with my testing (thanks, James) to convince myself that I was ready to take the leap of faith. But then I jumped in.

I just returned to San Diego on Sunday after spending almost two weeks with the Fire and Ice fixtures on my show and I have to say I’m really impressed. They not only replaced the blue PAR backlight wash and red PAR sidelight wash that I was originally planning, but did so with a vengeance. Not until the other day when someone had asked me how it went with the Seladors did I realize that the smoothness of dimming was indistinguishable from that of its tungsten-based buddies, even with long crossfades or completely fading the fixtures out. Having instant access to a large color palette from a single fixture without worrying about mechanically moving glass filters or plastic-sheet color media was wonderful. I was able to run through a gamut of moods over the span of the opera with these dynamic paint brushes….and feel good about the green-ness of it. I took a rig that would’ve been done with about 35,000 watts of tungsten-sourced lights and did it with under 7,500 watts (they’d only consume that much if I’d run all the colors at full on all the units, which I never did). And, as I noticed after programming, I only ever went as high as 40% of the output potential on the Ice units, as putting them up to full power would’ve been just too bright for the show. All that firepower from a lighting tool that can fit nine 21” fixtures into one 20A circuit.

I have to say that, after my recent experience, I’m a believer. ETC has created an awesome pair of flexible LED fixtures in the Fire and Ice that deliver much more than I would’ve gotten from even 1000W PAR64 fixtures fitted with color changers to meet my blue and red lighting needs. I believe that their color flexibility, smooth dimming curve, long lamp life, low heat, low maintenance, and energy savings will help the Selador line find homes in schools, theaters, music halls, churches, television studios, and architainment projects as an important part of the lighting design toolbox.

Source Fours in their (un)natural habitat

When I first saw the Source Four at LDI in 1992 I knew that it was going to change a lot of things. I wonder what the number would be if we could add up the kilowatt hours that the Source Four has saved the world in electrical generation. And yet the lighting world has pretty much forgotten that our entertainment industry shaved roughly 40% off our average electrical usage beginning in 1993 as the Source Fours made their way in to the market.

I am occasionally struck by the depth that the Source Four has reached. You see them in places where they were never meant to be.  I took this photo at Union Station in Washington DC while on spring break a few weeks back.  I was struck by the juxtaposition of the Source Fours against a tri-level backdrop of food court and retail. Thousands of people pass through here every day and couldn’t care less, but I am sure that someone like me or you also passes through weekly and notices these fixtures oddly out of place with their retail surroundings.

Seeing how these products have seeped out deeply into the market makes a comment on how lighting worlds have merged so heavily in the past 15 years. The two worlds of commercial lighting and the stage have been slowly, magnetically drawn toward each other over time. It's like a big luminary mash-up. What’s to blame? Several areas I can think of have contributed.

Technology is one – stage technologies that are just really useful beg for adoption elsewhere.  I don’t really see this the other way around – are stage designers adopting commercial technologies?

Designers – the masses of MFA trained lighting designers that hit the street each year looking for work add to the mash-up. As they seek work, commercial design firms seek imaginative, tech savvy assistants.

A flair for the dramatic – retail, hospitality and even commercial facilities are all looking for a gimmick. (I have to say gimmick because that is so often what it ends up looking like.) From my perspective there have been a few nice things done here and also buckets of money flushed down the drain. Nonetheless, it adds to the cross pollination of lighting.

Sales networks – when I look at the highly skilled, creative sales force at ETC, both our internal and our rep network, I see how creative salespeople are solving commercial lighting problems with non-traditional products – and getting orders from it. I have seen some extraordinary solutions and some extraordinary sales of equipment for unusual reasons.

There are probably many more observations on lighting cultures and mash-ups. What’s yours?

New on etcconnect.com: white papers and application notes

A nubbin post today to point out that we've introduced a new feature in our also-new Support section: the Reference Library. That's a label that could mean a lot of things, but in this case, that's what we're calling the area of our site where you can find white papers, application notes and other kinds of guides and documentation on the science and art of lighting and lighting control. It's a small-but-growing library, and a variety of topics are covered already.

Curious about factors that can impact lamp life? David North covers that in one document, and shares tips for selecting the right dimmer in another. Looking for a guide to indicator lights on your new Paradigm system? You're covered. Immersing yourself in research for new LEDs? We've got a few great entries on that subject, too.

ETC experts have been asking for a public forum for sharing these documents for some time, and now that we've made it happen, let's not bruise their egos by letting this stuff go unused! The more you use it, the more they'll produce. And, while you're there, if you have a suggestion on topics you'd like us to address in the future, leave a comment and we'll look into it!

People for the ethical demonstration of Selador

ETC Field Project Coordinator David Hilton discusses an important issue facing lighting designers:

There’s a tragedy occurring every day in this country – a tragedy that affects lighting designers and technicians alike. This tragedy is unfolding right in our backyards. I’ve personally seen it firsthand, and I struggle to mitigate its aftereffects. You may have been witness to these horrid events and didn’t even know it. The tragedy is simple: seeing a lighting demonstration of a product outside of its natural environment. The most egregious example of this, for the purposes of this blog, is Selador.

Lighting products, especially of the entertainment variety, are sensitive creatures. They are conscious of their surroundings and react very differently when taken from their natural environment. I have traveled the country far and wide and have seen time and time again people placing a Selador on trunnions four feet in front of a wall, and it sickens me. ‘Don’t they understand they aren’t even giving it a chance?’ I often think to myself. ‘Don’t they know how beautiful that light wants to look? How much it yearns to be back in a theater, hung in the air, lighting someone?’ The only thing that calms my spirit is the fact that these tragic demonstrations of the Selador product are indeed innocent. For years, people have taken other LED products and have shined them on a wall, which is what those fixtures were built to do. How could they know that Selador is so different?

As a man trying to perpetuate the ethical demonstrations of lighting products, I ask this: do you remember the first time you saw a Source Four? Was it on a floorplate pointed at a wall three feet in front of it? Sadly, some of you will say yes, but that is a tragedy of a different magnitude. For most people, the first time they saw a Source Four it was hung on a pipe in the air, and it was there, in all its natural beauty, that people first saw the beautiful, sculpted light pour out of the front of the fixture and hit the waiting stage below. It was there that someone placed a set piece or an actor and you saw in front of you the sheer quality of light at which it illuminated those objects. And it was there that the Source Four felt at home.

Selador and Source Four are similar in this way: they feel at home in the theater. Selador feels comfortable lighting people and objects on a stage. Placing them on the ground and shining them on a wall give them a hollow existence. And why would anybody want to hurt a Selador? All they want to do is play with you. Selador yearns to give designers the options of changing their top wash from rich ambers to subtle lavenders to brilliant magentas. It yearns to light an actor in a light that looks as natural as a tungsten source, then grins when it suddenly changes to moonlight blue. It knows the lighting designers in the audience are scratching their heads, wondering if there is some sort of a color changing device on a Fresnel. What’s even sadder about the tragedy of mis-demonstrating Selador is that the designers suffer as much as the Seladors... and they don’t even know it!

I’ve begun a campaign in the Western United States. This campaign is aimed at one thing: to save Seladors across the country from unnatural demonstrations. If Seladors want to show themselves off as a top wash, I say let them. If they want to show off their color-mixing and lensing capabilities by lighting an entire cyc, I say it’s their right to do so. If they want to light a human being in 3200k, then in 5600k, I say, go for it!

And ETC is behind me on this. We are increasing the opportunities to save Seladors and lighting designers alike from horrible demonstrations. Come check us out at tradeshows where different types of Seladors will be playing with each other. Make an effort to see a Selador demonstration by one of our qualified ETC Field Project Coordinators (FPCs). FPCs are located and travel throughout the country, and they’ve been specially trained on how to take care of Seladors, to make them shine their best. Or see us at the Selador Roadshow, a marketing event headed to a local college or university near you. You will not only see how Seladors behave in their natural environment, but you’ll get an opportunity to play with them and see which one you want to take home!

Help my efforts to end these psychotic wall demonstrations! Let us come together and finally put Seladors where they want and deserve to be!