Re: Don't buy Martin!

Hi Michael,

As those guys said, your cheapest option is probably to buy a couple
extra lights to fill those holes. You can pick up a couple used par
cans quite cheap, and make them work, as long as you have dimmers for
them in your front of house positions.

That said, there are a couple of decent mirror heads for leikos that
are made for things like moving specials around and filling holes.
I've successfully used them as follow spots several times, and while
it takes a little practice if you're controlling it with submaster
faders, it's quite easy if you have a board which is made to control
moving lights and has a trackball. At the very least, they are easy to
program to hit a specific position (a hole) and then move to hit a
different one later on.

If you're on a tight budget, the place to look is at the meteor
Elipscans:

http://www.meteor-global.com/products-theatricalLighting.php

they are made to fit on the front of a source four with a barrel of 26
degrees or less. I own eight of them that I use in auto mode for
parties, and will often put one or two in the front of house for shows
where I want a followspot look, or will need to fill in some holes.

If you have the money, then Roscoe makes the I-Cue, which is basically
the same thing, but with a bit more finesse. The biggest difference
you get for the price is that the Elipscans have only one channel of
control each for pan and tilt - divide up the entire 180 degree spread
of where the mirror can move, and then put that range into 100 (0 -
full on your board) and you see that each 1 percent on your board
covers almost 2 degrees of movement. Over a long throw, this can be a
significant difference. The I-cue can use two channels to control pan
and two for tilt, which means that you have 10,000 positions you can
hit across that range instead of 100 (technically with one channel you
have 255, and with two you have 255 x 255, but in practice, it will be
your board's percentages that limit you).

The only time you will notice that difference, really, is if you have
the light moving very slowly across the stage. I once used an elipscan
to move a window gobo across the stage very slowly, to show the
movement of the moon outside, moving it 5 - 8% every five or six
minutes. Ideally I wanted a smooth movement over that range, but what
I got instead was that each time the board would click up a percentage
point as it did i's timed fade, the light would move a few inches on
the stage. By keeping the light rather dim in comparison to the other
stuff that was lighting the scene, I was able to get away with it, but
I was definitely wi****ng I had an I-cue during that technical
process.

There may be some other mirror heads out there, but I haven't run into
them. Some will add music sensing mics and other features (Meteor
makes two or three different versions of the Elipscan) to them, but it
sounds like all you need is the simplest version. Have a look and see
if they might do what you're looking for.

Stephen