When Gothenburg City Theatre in Sweden received funding from the regional government to spend on energy saving measures, the first thing the technicians thought of replacing was their energy hungry cyclorama lighting. With the help of Peter Wikström, project manager at One Two Sales in Gothenburg, the technicians quickly realised that not only would ETC’s Selador Vivid-R Classic provide the quality and power of light they needed while saving a huge amount of energy, the theatre also gains around 4-5m of additional stage depth. Previously, a large gap needed to be kept between the luminaires and the cyc wall itself; the Selador, which can be mounted on the last flying bar, allows a greater area of stage to be used.
The latest update to the Selador Classic line, Vivid-R combines high power Luxeon Rebel LEDs and high efficiency lenses for a strong cutting beam of light and maximum colour production. The x7 Color System is optimised to create intense, vibrant primary colours across the entire colour spectrum.
Anders Johanssen, lighting manager at the theatre, says: “I was looking for a lantern which could combine the old traditional halogen cyc with the possibilities of modern LED. It was important to be able to do both long smooth fades and quick strobe fades. And, with our very large cyc wall, we didn’t want to have fillers on the floor.”
“I have worked with the theatre’s technicians before, on previous lighting projects,” adds Wilkström. “and they were grateful for my suggestion to install Selador. We looked around at competitor products, but Selador was by far the best for the job: it fulfilled the need for a smooth dimming curve, with no dip or flicker at the end; and the colour mixing on Selador is better than any other LED fixture.
“The theatre cyc wall is a 15m x 25m curved wall. The fixtures couldn’t be too close to it, otherwise the audience would be able to see the wall’s texture; however, we still needed to get an even light across the entire area. We ended up using 20 special double yokes and cross shooting the fixtures’ beams so that they could all be focussed from the same lighting truss.”
The theatre has not started using the new cyc lighting yet, but is expecting to make substantial savings when they are switched on. Wilkström says: “We calculated the amount of savings we could achieve from replacing the 48 1kW cyc lights with Selador: when full on, Selador use a little over 11.5kW, while the cyc lights they replace use 48kW. Per year, this could be a saving of around €21,000 (£18,100), or almost €360,000 (£310,400) over the 50,000 hour lifetime of the Selador fixtures.” There are also savings to be made from eliminating the need for lamps and filters to be replaced periodically.