Scroller Strings

[notwhoyouthink]

Where does everyone get their scroller strings from? Do you make them yourselves or buy them ready-made and where is cheapest?

 

Cheers, notwhoyouthink

[tokm]

AC... SLX... Whitelight... Oh nd my good friends Viking Stage Lighting. All are the 1st ones that come to mind :P

 

Oh whoes the cheapest, well that depends on how many frames you want, what brand and sort (rosco/lee & HT or standard), how big'a scrollers they're for (something that goes on a fixed angle s4 or a 8cell molefay..) Oh and how many of them you want. If you want 12 they're more likely to give you a deal compared to if you only want 1.

 

HTH

 

Tom

[Ynot]

Where does everyone get their scroller strings from? Do you make them yourselves or buy them ready-made and where is cheapest?

Last set I used I made myself.

Not something for the faint-hearted to attempt, as it needs a steady hand, and a decent sized wheel-cut guillotine with a good right-angled guide.

:P

[Bryson]

I wouldn't even dream of making them. Even at their most expensive, they're not all that of an expense. Just get them made by your usual supplier.

[Ynot]

I wouldn't even dream of making them. Even at their most expensive, they're not all that of an expense. Just get them made by your usual supplier.

In a masochistic sorta way, I almost enjoyed putting them together. there was a certain sense of achievement in getting it done, then installing them in the (Strand Colour Call) scrollers and finding that once tensioned etc they worked fine!!

[gyro_gearloose]

..and if you are going to make your own, then you might want to get hold of some film splicing tape from somewhere like Jack Roe. We've got six Compulite Whisper scrollers with colour rolls we made ourselves several years ago and they're still going strong!

[Neil Hampson]

I know AC lighting in Leeds do a good custom service for the scroll strings, last year I decided to modify the string in my scrollers, just change a couple of the frames, by the time you have bought the scroller tape (£20) and the gel for 16 frames (£50-60) I think you may as well have them made, even just changing 3 frames out of the 16 on 4 scrollers (ChromaQ M2) was a nightmare that took the best part of an afternoon, the accuracy that you need for the frames does require either a proper rotary cutter or at the very least a decent draughtman's square to make sure that each frame runs exactly in line. and I don't even want to go near the tensioning issues...

 

It can be done and there is a satisfaction knowing that you have done it yourself but sometimes it's just not worth the hassle and expense, (especially when at Christmas you find your stepson wrapping pressents with the scrollertape beacuse we had run out of ordinary stuff! - Ouch)

 

The sound of a scroller spitting out 6 metres of gel is one of the worst you will hear at beginers!

[Ike]

I've made quite a few up at various points and didn't find it too difficult, if you've got a few to do making a template (I used some scrap sheet steel) is well worth the effort.

 

As other have said buying ready made probably isn't much more expensive and a lot less work, I still think its quite a useful skill to have though.

[notwhoyouthink]

OK, thanks for your help! What colours (preferably supergel) would you recommend for a general-purpose string? (I know this is like asking 'how long is a piece of string?' but some ideas would be useful) It is for a school so colours suitable for theatre, music and dance would all be useful. Strings can be up to 33 frames (for Rainbow 8" Pros) although there are also some old Rainbows (up to 16) too so a shorter string with a selection of the 33 will also need to be made. Anny suggestions for which these should be would also be appreciated! :)

[Oovis]

Strings can be up to 33 frames (for Rainbow 8" Pros)

Just a thought here but we had a rig of Rainbow PROs, many with 33 frame strings, on our last production which gave us loads of grief with them jamming or recalibrating live! It may be worth just reducing the colour count a bit to stop the thing working right on the limit.

[Graham Threader]

We supply our 8" Pro with just 20 colours loaded. We can supply custom scrolls if requested. Our sequence is:

 

130 103 152 107 111 201 144 118 132 119 126 139 122 128 164 106 179 102 101 (All E colour/Lee numbers)

 

We have tried to juxtapose colours so that if the registration 'slips' the adjacent colour panel is sympathetic to the one you were looking for and doesn't present a dreadful (unusable) combination.

 

When considering how many panels to put into your scroll it may be worth considering that the greater the number the longer the average time to move from colour to colour. If noise is an issue, and generally it is, you want to be in the position of being able to use a slow speed to minimise noise.

 

Good luck!

[Tomo]

OK, thanks for your help! What colours (preferably supergel) would you recommend for a general-purpose string?

I'm told that the meetings to decide the Revolution standard scroll were very long, protracted, and argumentative!

 

My personal opinion is that there is no such thing as a 'general-purpose' string.

The useful colours depend too much on what you're doing with it - and then the order of the colours matters a lot as well, as Grahm mentioned!

 

Backlight, sidelight, facelight, toplight - all have a different list of 'useful' colours, and that list changes according to the style of show you are going to do.

 

A start might be:

Warm, Warm 2, Amber(s), Green(s), Blue(s), Cold, Cold 2, CTB, Open White, Saturated Colours

 

Except probably not in that order!

 

As a general rule, 20 frames is probably as high as you want to go - all scrollers drift (though some are better than others), and you don't want to recalibrate your colour palettes too often!