Focus Palettes
Another way to make your workflow more efficient is Focus Palettes. Yes, that would be a reference to that big flat piece of wood, covered in paint, that painters like Bob Ross use. Dang he was good.
In the same way that Bob would quickly and easily grab an idea from his palette and place it on the canvas, we can easily grab a fixture and paint the stage with light. We’ll talk about other palettes in the next lesson, but one of the most useful ones is Focus Palettes which remember the pan / tilt location of a moving fixture. Rather than having to grab the light and methodically point it to downstage left; just send it to this happy little palette right here.
Let’s try it out together.
Quick note: of course Focus Palettes only work with lights that have pan and tilt functionality; therefore, in our worksheet that limits us to Groups 51, 61, and 601. If you want to play around a little more with these lights, feel free.
Alright. Let’s turn on Group 51 and 61 at Full. You’ll see immediately that these lights are all pointing straight down, in their home position. What if we wanted to have a dramatic look for a person center stage? Well, if you look at your Magic Sheet again, you’ll notice on the last page that I’ve created a reference for myself, to help remember which Focus Palette is which. So here we would want to use FP5.
Now, let’s set only Group 51 to Focus Palette 5, I would type [Group] [51] [Focus Palette] [5] [Enter] (or Alt+F on your computer keyboard). And all the lights will move just like that!
This Focus Palette is set to work with all the moving lights in our rig, but we only told Group 51 to pull the information from the Palette, so they’re the only ones that moved.
If we didn’t have some sort of reference sheet; we could always look at the Focus Palette list by double tapping the Focus Palette button, or [Focus Palette] [Focus Palette]. You’ll be sent into Blind mode and see a lit of Palettes with labels, which actually includes a handful more than what’s listed on our reference sheet (you may need to scroll down to see them) including #10, “Full Stage Wash”.
So let’s go back to Live mode and set Group 51 and Group 61 to Focus Palette 10. Oh. Quick side note. Typing [Group] [51] [+] [61] will assume that you mean Group 51 and Channel 61; so you’ll need to type [Group] [51] [+] [Group] [61] … Anyway … You’ll see a nice, orderly wash system. But … there’s one light that’s a little off. We’ll fix that in a second to help illustrate an important part of Palettes. For now, let’s record this as Cue 1.
Why don’t you go back to Cue 0, a Blackout, then hit [GO] to go to Cue 1. Since we don’t have an Automark Cue before Cue 1 (or any cue for that matter), you’ll see the lights move from their home position to their Focus Palette. If you really wanted to, you could go back to Cue 0, the Blackout, and record this as Cue 0.5 which would create an Automark Cue.
But here’s the important part to note; if you were to look at the channels in the Live Table display, you’ll see that their pan and focus values have adopted the name of the Focus Palette. And if you were to move a light around (such as the image below, I’ve adjusted channel 51), then we would switch over to numbers instead of names.
Focus Palettes are simply a reference. A Cue doesn’t store the Palette’s values, it points to the Focus Palette; meaning, if you were to update the values of the Palette, every cue in your show that uses that Palette will also be updated. This is especially powerful for situations like touring shows. When you re-hang your fixtures, they might not be in the exact same place; but just update your Focus Palettes and everything is ready to go!
Alright; let’s try that out. Go to Cue 0, clearing your cue stack. Next, bring up channels 52 and 62 at full and set them to Focus Palette 10. This will be our problem light and our reference location.
Our problem light here is Channel 52; so type [52] [Enter] to select the light and then adjust the pan and tilt until it matches the focus of channel 62. With everything fixed; let’s update FP10 by pressing [Update] [Focus Palette] [10] [Enter].
Alight, let’s test it out. Sneak out all the lights, going back to a blackout and go to cue 1. Since Cue 1 points to a Focus Palette; Channel 52 has implemented your fix and everything looks happy now!
Recording a Focus Palette is easy. Try taking Group 51 and focusing all the lights to the far DSL part of the stage (by doing a long click on the Augment3d display) and set Group 61 to the far DSR part of the stage.
We could now record this as FP21 – “Side Stages” by typing [Record] [Focus Palette] [21] [Label] {Side Stages} [Enter]. It’s that simple. And you’ll even see that the Live Table display has adopted your new Focus Palette name!