The science of color has brought us many innovative systems over the years - Kodachrome in photography and Technicolor in film are two of the more commercially successful examples. Before we dive into a new, innovative color system in the entertainment technology industry, let us take a trip back a few years.
We are in New York City sometime around 2012 and lighting industry veteran Matthias Hinrichs is navigating the streets of Manhattan on his way to another product demonstration. He had done many before and with the latest high-tech luminaire in tow, one boasting the latest and greatest in color mixing, he was confident his prospective client, a prominent Broadway lighting designer, would be impressed. Excited to show off the cutting-edge fixture, he fired it up and ran it through its paces.
“He hated it. He hated the colors in it and asked me to turn it off,” Matthias recalls, somewhat soberly. “That was a real humbling experience.”
So what went wrong?
In his 25+ years in entertainment technology, Matthias had had lots of discussions with lighting designers of all types about color and color mixing systems, and had successfully demoed hundreds of lights. The fixture he had just shown could mix what he thought were beautiful color shades. “But they weren’t the colors this designer wanted to see. His color vision was based around a different color palette.”
The experience stuck with him. How could someone’s perception of color be so different from so many others he had surveyed? Matthias gets to the crux of the problem. “There were compromises with all color mixing systems and you had to choose what side of the color spectrum you wanted to be on. You always had to decide who you wanted to appeal to and that was really difficult and unsatisfying. For this designer, it was the wrong type of color.”
Every manufacturer chooses different tones of CMY to put in a lighting fixture, which results in subtle differences in hue and saturation. A color palette that satisfies the theatre designer might not appeal to the rock ‘n’ roll designer. “You always had to choose what direction to go in - do you want a great looking Congo or a strong medium blue? There were always compromises.”
The experience demonstrated, somewhat succinctly, that everyone has a different perception of color and the colors they feel work best. Fast forward to early 2018 and lighting manufacturer Elation Professional gathers its R&D team on both sides of the Atlantic to begin investigating the possibility of creating a better color mixing system, one that was more inclusive that could appeal to a wider clientele of designers.
Recognizing the opportunity and spawned by a company culture of innovative curiosity, the team, which includes Elation R&D head Irek Skoczowski and European R&D head Roger Hamers, along with product design and product management personnel, sets to work. Knowing that the traditional CMY system has compromises and that no CMY system can reach all the colors a designer wants, engineers began to address – or re-address – a CMY + RGB color mixing system that Elation had actually experimented with previously.
“The idea had come up years earlier, around 2013/2014, when we experimented with the possibilities,” recalls Irek Skoczowski, head of R&D at Elation’s worldwide headquarters in Los Angeles. “We eventually put such a system in a prototype discharge-lamp fixture and although it showed promise, we ended up shelving it. LED engines were advancing rapidly and we made the decision to wait and focus on development of a brighter LED source.”
The move toward a CMY + RGB color mixing system would have to wait, for the time being. By early 2018 however, with the advent of brighter LED engines, along with more precise optics and more compact color systems that made it possible to pack additional layers inside a fixture, the time had arrived.
Elation’s R&D team took the prototype CMY+RGB system off the shelf and began to refine it. “The fact that white LED systems were getting so bright is really what allowed the change to take place,” states Roger Hamers, head of R&D at Elation’s European facility in the Netherlands. “The intensity was so high that you could utilize the additional colors and make the system work to fill some of the holes in the color spectrum like strong saturated colors that are difficult to achieve with a traditional CMY system. We saw that it really created some very unique color tones that were impossible to reach before.”
A firm grasp of color theory was necessary to craft harmonious colors with high usability. Over several months, experiments were conducted with different tones of CMY and various RGB points, examining hue, shade, tint, tone and saturation. Eventually “pure” RGB color points were chosen for best saturation. Subtractive and fully variable, they allowed for nuanced cross fades and a greater range of intermediate colors. Color temperature played a role as well and CTO was added to the mix.
The result was a 7-flag color mixing system that Elation dubbed SpectraColor. The new system can produce specific shades that greatly enhances the possible color range and is capable of fine-tuning color to resonate best with individual users. Primary colors that are more pure were accessible, as well as subtle reds, blues and greens that are near impossible to mix with a primary CMY mixing system. Deep blues to light pastels, deep reds to light pinks like salmon and coral tones, dark greens to varied shades like seafoam teal. More obscure colors were suddenly in reach. Furthermore, unique light sources like metal halide, sodium vapor or fluorescent tubes were also replicable.
By fall of 2018, the SpectraColor system was ready and debuted in Elation’s Artiste Monet™, an LED Profile fixture that went on to win multiple awards for lighting innovation. In 2109, The Metropolitan Opera in New York was one of the first to embrace the new technology, installing 70 Monet fixtures in a repertory plot, and others would soon follow. Two other luminaires with SpectraColor systems were added, the Artiste Rembrandt™ and Artiste Mondrian™. All three fixtures house a powerful 950W 6,500K Bright White LED engine that allows the full capability of the system to shine through.
That wayward demo in New York years earlier, although uncomfortable at the time, helped spur a reflective process that would ultimately result in a better color mixing system. “I’ll never forget that lighting designer,” Matthias contemplates, “and in some way I feel I owe him a debt of gratitude. Our goal was to make a color system with fewer compromises, something better, something different that creates value for designers, and that’s what we’ve done.”
