Founder Jack Calmes has been an innovator in the concert business all his life, it seems. From his early days as a concert promoter to the founding of Showco, he is one of the original pioneers in audio and lighting rental gear catering to the touring professional. Jack found a niche in the lighting business that nobody else has come close to matching, and he always seems to find ways to upgrade his products and make new ones. He and Jimmy Page, his sidekick of over 20 years, have achieved legendary status in our industry because they have delivered quality gear to all types of shows. And despite their accumulative years in the biz, they show no signs of slowing down.
Manufacturing and Rentals
I walked into their massive warehouse last month to take a look at how they operate. There is the manufacturing side, where lights are assembled, and the rental side, where techs prep the gear. The first thing Jack showed me was how Syncrolite has revolutionized scrollers by eliminating traditional gel strings. They realized long ago that the heat of the high-powered Syncrolites would burn through any gel rather quickly. The price for expendable gel could really raise the rental price and reliability of his fixtures. So Jack and his team, in association with Rosco Labs, set out to come up with a dichro film that could withstand the heat and sustain the color purity of glass dichroic filters without fading and last indefinitely. That led them to come up with the dichro film used in their exclusive trademarked and patented OmniColor system. True to its name, this material is precision-cut into individual colored sections of flexible dichroic film, and these sections are then connected in scrolls for a fixture. The individual sheets of this thin film are seamlessly welded together in a patented process on a special machine at the shop. No tape is used, and the gel strings do not come apart inside the fixture. This feature, combined with Syncrolite VFL thin film lenses, which are welded into linear zoom, also create unlimited color mixing. Any combination of color between the source and VFL provide any proportional mix of those two or three colors.
Once Syncrolite developed this product, it seemed logical to utilize it in all sizes. The large Xenon track lights, such as the XL10 (a massive 10K Xenon searchlight), the MX4 (a smaller 4K version) and the compact SXB 7/3 all feature multiple thin film scrollers to make color mixing easier for the operator. By cleverly placing pieces of clear gel between sheets of colored gel, the operator can set up his cues to achieve any color and cross fade from one color to another on timed cues. Syncrolite then utilized OmniColor VFL and thin film color strings to make a series of color changers called the “Biaxial,” designed to fit Source Four PARs. These waterproof color changers have a single scroll cartridge and can be fitted with either the Rosco/Syncrolite Dichro Film or any other conventional gel the designer wishes to use.
The Biaxial scroller, which is patented, allows the operator to mix any color and to de-saturate that color by adding white light via a movable carriage. If you go from deep red to pink — no problem — add some white. Taking it a step further, the company has designed their own PAR fixtures built around the GE Ceramic Metal Halides in the CMH150 and the 40,000-lumen CMH 400 PAR — with a 10,000+ hour lamp life and output similar to LED, but with CRI over 95. These are indoor/outdoor architectural lights that offer different wattages for brightness levels and dimming through dousers or linear faders. They also make a CMH PAR designed to be submersible in water.
Moving Lights
While the PAR products have separate slots to place VFL light shaping diffuser lenses, the moving lights have taken it a step further. Syncrolite has developed another unique and patented feature they call FP Gobos — cut out scrollable “gobo” type patterns imbedded in thin film and “welded” in sequence. These various proprietary dichro film colors and FX provide a wide array of looks not found with any other fixture at the massive scale of a the Syncros.
When used to shine on the surface of something large, one can achieve a stunning “sparkling” effect. Years ago, Jack was called upon to light the pyramids of Egypt with his arsenal of products. The footage of these ancient wonders, dazzling under the special effects of the Syncros, is just phenomenal, and they covered the entire Great Pyramid with a cross-fading color wash with only 11 fixtures. I shot a DVD at a stadium recently and had 20 of the 4K fixtures scattered around the perimeter. The director complained that the audience lights we were using were not bright enough for the cameras to pick up the people at the back of the stadium, 500 feet from the stage. I simply took two of the fixtures from the stage and zoomed them to about a third of their potential size and focused them at the rear end of the stadium for the entire show. I did not blind anyone, and two Syncros did the job that 60 conventional fixtures could not.
Game Changer
This year, Syncrolite has moved into another direction that nobody else has ventured into. By coming out with ArenaColor, the company has raised the bar of architectural and TV lighting by building a combination sports lighter with a dichro film changer, VFL lenses and douser.
For years, all sporting arenas have been designed to have massive rows of white sports lights to illuminate a playing field to simulate daylight. And all the camera crews around the world need that for a sporting event. But once television brought in all the opening-game ceremonies and half time spectacles in the last couple of decades, we have been trying to reverse this trend. Directors have brought in millions of dollars worth of rental lights just to turn the whole arena blue for three minutes of air time. Buildings were purchasing both sports lighters and a large number of other various color-changing fixtures.
The ArenaColor is a large-format color changer with Syncrolite optics that comes complete with a built-in douser. It is designed to mate with the front of the Philips ArenaVision or GE ES2000 lighting fixture, both highly-demanded fixtures being installed at ball parks and convention centers worldwide. It attaches easily with a few standoffs and a simple fastener. This fixture comes with a single gel string containing eight primary dichroic filters and a douser. OmniColor mixing provides a wide range of color with just these eight frames. There is an internal lens holder to accommodate the various VFL lenses from 5° to 60° and a range of anamorphics as unique as .2° by 15° to 60° by 10° and 75° by 45° that come with the product. Only four DMX channels per fixture are required for operation.
One can manually focus these fixtures easily and, while you cannot obtain a sharp edge, it is possible to light just the area one wants to illuminate without barn doors. Syncrolite has been renting many of these ArenaColors by mounting three inside custom 10-foot sections of auto truss designed by Tomcat. Each truss section has an additional metal pipe that slides out from the ends of the truss to hang additional fixtures. The PSU stays mounted in the top rail of the truss while the lights are lowered down after it is hoisted off the ground. With ArenaColor’s combined weight of 140 lbs. per fixture, this is a good way to rent them.
Recently I witnessed the house lights go off at a televised swimming event. The only lights were 24 ArenaColors in blue lighting the rectangular pool from a 60-foot trim height. With each fixture spitting out 200,000 lumens of light and the proper gel type lenses installed, I was left staring at just deep blue water. I thought I was in the Caribbean as opposed to a field house.
Years ago, designers used big Mole Fey lights with color changers to illuminate a stage with a flat wash of color. Over the years, the cost and pain of keeping these large-format scrollers working has made them extinct. I’m excited, because I believe Syncrolite has found a way to bring back the big wash to concert touring. And as I think of Syncrolite now, well it’s not just about that big light beam anymore.
Syncrolite ArenaColor
What It Is: Large-format color-changer with Syncrolite optics and built-in douser.
Pros: Fills a much-needed role, filling the void for a big architectural wash light. Sturdy,
weather-resistant IP65 construction. Gel strings that do not require constant replacement.
Cons: Unless you are permanently installing the fixture, the list price seems high.
How Much: About $14,500
