Programming a 'colour sweep'

[DickM]

I'd like some advice on programming a Jester ML48, which I have some experience of, but only for one week per year, and this time I need to do something a little different.

 

The Jester will be running 48 channels of conventional dimmers, some Colorado LED Pars, and a couple of Martin Mac250s. The show is a musical and will be programmed using a standard cue stack for easy playback, which will handle all the LED colour changes and Mac movements. So far, no problem, as we've done all this before.

 

However, we will also be adding 12 Pulsar ChromaStrips on a ChromaZone controller, which we have never used before. I can see that we can set each ChromaStrip as a separate fixture on the desk, and can therefore change all or some of their colours, from one cue to the next, but is there a way of programming a colour fade that 'sweeps' across the fixtures from one cue to the next?

 

In other words, if all the ChromaStrips all blue in cue 27 and we want them to be red in cue 28, is there an easy way of programming a fade so that, on GO cue 28, Strip no 1 changes to red first, then strip 2, then strip 3, etc, until steady state is reached for cue 28 when they are all red? This should of course happen at the same time and over the same duration that all the other lanterns are changing their states for cue 28 too.

 

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

 

Many thanks, DickM

[Jon Hole]

Hi DickM,

 

First, I was going to suggest recording several cues (I would personally use the point cues, so your number sequence doesn't get too badly affected), all with their trigger set to 'auto', and a fade time of however long you require.

 

However, on a Jester, the following becomes tricky...

 

This should of course happen at the same time and over the same duration that all the other lanterns are changing their states for cue 28 too.

 

If you know you have 10 cells, you could reduce/increase the percentage of each channel by 1/10th of the overall change on each step - however this isn't a 'nice' solution, and if you choose to make an edit of the final step, you would need to update each and every cue. It would work, however it's not an elegant, or particularly practical, solution!

[DickM]

Hi Jon, thanks for the quick response.

 

I had thought about trying to do it this way, but came to the same conclusion - editing all point cues for 48 dimmer channels over 10 steps would be bad enough, without even thinking about the LED Pars and Macs. Especially if we want to try to do this more than once in the show

 

However, I could see how this would work if the colour 'sweep' could happen either before or after everthing else had changed state, so this technique could prove a useful backup.

 

Could there be a way of combining a one-shot chase of 12 steps that is triggered at the same time as the GO button? Would the colour fade between the start- and end-state on the cue stack take precidence over the colour values in the chase?

 

Alternatively, would it help if we dissassociated the ChromaStrips from what's going on the cue stack; perhaps running them manually from sub-masters or chases or some othe magic function of the fixtures controls?

[Jon Hole]

Alternatively, would it help if we dissassociated the ChromaStrips from what's going on the cue stack; perhaps running them manually from sub-masters or chases or some othe magic function of the fixtures controls?

 

This sounds like a good option - create a chase on a submaster which does just the colour. Once you have got to the end of the chase, record several cues all the same - this gives you time to then pull down the submaster at the end, so the chase doesn't start again (there is no way to do a one-shot chase on a Jester ML).

 

Because colour is 'latests takes precedence' (LTP), and submasters on the Jester ML don't release, the colour will stay when you pull down the submaster. Just make sure the intensity of the LEDs are recorded into the cue itself.

[DickM]

Thanks for your advice Jon. It's not going to be quite a flexible as I'd hoped, as I'll have to program a new chase for each different colour change (eg. red to blue, blue to green, green back to blue, etc) but it sounds like it should be possible for one or two cases, and I'll just have to manage the director's expectations (again)!

 

Many thanks,

DickM.