The fundamentals of moving light programming start with understanding the individual parameters of the lights themselves. Learning how each parameter works as well as how to make them respond the way you want them to is the first step in broadening your moving light programming knowledge. From there, there are a couple of other things you will need to know before you can proceed to build your palettes, presets, and libraries. These would include setting up your desk with the type of lights you’re going to be working with, patching your lights, and creating your window interface or learning how to navigate through all of the views that the desk your working with provides.

What are palettes? Think of them as you would an artist’s palette. When an artist paints, he or she uses a palette to choose colors from. These colors can be straight out of the tube or mixed with other colors in order to provide the perfect blend, however, they’re all organized on a palette for quick access. Without this palette, the artist would have to stop painting with one color, pick another tube(s) of paint, and mix a new color every time he or she would want a new color. This would become very time consuming not to mention the frustration of trying to mix just the right hue of color every time you finished with a few strokes of the brush.

A programming palette (presets or libraries on various consoles) is much the same but instead of using paint to comprise your palette you use colors, gobos/beams, and positions. A palette is an area where you can store frequently used parameter values for quick recall while programming your cues. These areas not only accommodate individual parameter settings but can also store combinations of parameters over some or all of you fixtures. The different types of palettes can vary on a per console basis but generally they are your groups, positions, colors, and beams.

If you set up your palettes efficiently and keep a consistent method of organization, you’ll find programming your cues to be much faster and easier. A large percent of your programming speed will be dictated by how efficient and organized your palettes are. It’s very important to lay out your palettes in a logical order as well as descriptively label them so that when the time arrives to select a palette, you’ll be able to recall where you put it, quickly.

In this article we’ll expose some of the techniques used in building palettes then we’re going to take a look a few show looks and dissect them to give you a real life look at how groups and palettes applied to those looks. For the purposes of demonstration, we’ll be using the Wholehog II but most of these same concepts can be applied to a wide array of moving light consoles.

Before you can start programming you’ll need to get your console talking to your fixtures. This procedure is known as patching which can be broken down into 4 sections:

1. Adding your fixtures to your console’s schedule.

The very first step to patching is to tell your console what type and how many fixtures you will be working with. Most consoles will provide you with a large menu of fixture types to choose from and some even include onboard editors that allow you to create or alter your own fixtures. The fixture library includes all the information on each of the fixture’s parameters and parameter ranges. This library will also contain information about what parameter group the fixture’s parameters will fall into by default when recording your palettes.

2. Assigning control channel numbers to you your fixtures.

Once you’ve finished adding fixtures to the fixture schedule you might wish to change the default control numbers of the fixtures to different starting addresses. The reason for this is mainly to aid in the timely recall of your fixtures when selecting them. If your system were to include 57 Cyberlights and 62 VL5a you might want to separate these 2 types of fixtures in to 2 separate numerical areas. Rather than numbering them in one block from 1 to 119 you might be able to recall the fixtures easier if the Cyberlights were numbered 1 through 57 and the VL5As were numbered 101 through 162. This technique is especially helpful when you have several different types of fixtures because you can separate your fixture types by blocks of hundreds. This way you always know that your Mac500s start at 1, your Studio Colors are in the 201 range, your Stage Scans are in your 301 range and your conventional in the 401 range. It’s much easier to recall the starting control channels of your fixtures if they all start at 1 or 101, 201, 301, etc...

Other numbering techniques include starting each truss or pipe at 1, 21, 41, 51 etc… This technique allows you to associate a new range starting with 1 to each position. I find that this technique can become a bit confusing when you have many types of fixtures and positions but for smaller systems it might help you to remember your fixture numbers better.

When it comes to the direction your fixture numbers go, I usually number my fixtures from upstage right to downstage left starting at 1 (or a range thereof) for each fixture type. See figure 1

Figure 1

1. Assigning DMX addresses to your control channels.

Once you’ve determined the numbers you are going to call your fixtures, it’s now time to assign those control channels to their fixture’s unique starting DMX addresses. Each fixture in your rig should have it’s own starting DMX address. This is the address you can set at the fixture itself. Each fixture’s unique starting address must not overlap with another fixtures address. Most of the problems encountered when firing up your system for the first time are due to a mis-addressed fixture. Changing the address to the correct one easily rectifies this problem.

To make this process easy to understand you may want to think of each fixture having 2 numbers. The control channel is the number that you will type in your console to select the fixture, and the DMX address is a hard number that you set at your fixture. You can call your fixture whatever number you want but that number must correspond and be patched to the actual DMX number on the fixture itself.

2. Aligning your fixture’s pan & tilts so they all move in a uniform fashion.

After you’ve patched your fixtures control channels to their appropriate DMX addresses and have determined that every fixture is operational when selected, you should align the fixtures pan & tilt functions so that no matter what the orientation of the fixture, they will all move in the same direction when selected and moved. This procedure is known as fixture alignment. If your fixtures don’t all move in the same direction, you will have to spend time thinking about which way to move the encoders or joystick on your desk every time you want to focus a fixture. You’ll find yourself moving your encoder right to focus your fixture left or up to focus it down. Your focusing speed will become much quicker if your fixtures are properly aligned. The object of aligning your fixtures is to match your fixture’s pan and tilt with your encoders, trackball, or other input devices on your console so that when you do turn your encoder right the fixture will follow. If all of your fixtures follow this convention, they will all move they same uniform way.

To align your fixtures, you are presented with 3 options that can be used alone or together to give you every possible direction in fixture orientation. The choices are PAN INVERT, TILT INVERT, and SWAP AXIS. Pan and tilt invert will change the direction a head will pan or tilt when moved on your encoder. Swap Axis will swap pan for tilt so that when you pan a fixture it will actually tilt it and vice versa. These options can be used on individual fixtures or whole trusses.

An effective way to approach fixture alignment is to look at your system and find all commonly oriented fixtures and select them. You first want to check the tilt of those fixtures, so tilt them using your encoder wheel. Do all of the fixtures move upstage when tilted upstage? Check to make sure that your wheel movement matches the fixture’s movement. If it doesn’t, then invert the tilt, if the fixtures are panning when your intent is to tilt them, swap the axis first then check the fixtures tilt.

Next you’ll want to check the pan of the fixture. When you align the pan of each fixture you should tilt them first. A simple rule I follow when aligning pan is to tilt all onstage overhead fixtures downstage and all front of house fixtures upstage to the stage before checking and aligning their pan. I do this because yoke fixtures (fixtures with an actual moving head) pan in opposite directions when tilted upstage or downstage of the fixture itself so you must decide on an area either upstage or downstage of the fixture before aligning the pan of the fixture. Since I will mostly be focusing my onstage fixtures either overhead or downstage I tilt the fixtures downstage of their enclosures to align their pan. For front of house fixtures, I tilt them up stage before aligning the pan because I know that in most instances, I will be focusing those units upstage of their enclosures and on to the stage.

If you follow these basic methods, your fixture alignment should effectively alleviate any frustration felt while trying to focus your moving lights un-aligned.

After you’ve successfully patched your console you should learn how your console navigates through its views. If the console provides user definable views, this would be the point where you could set those up before you proceed.

Preset groups are stored selections of your fixtures. They enable quick access to many fixtures with the push of one button. They can be used to select all of a fixture/type(s), ranges of your fixtures, odds/even fixtures, random selections of your fixtures and even single fixtures. Groups really do help to increase your speed and they should be used as much as possible to select the different parts of your system. To create a group, you would select the fixtures you want in that group and record them in the groups window.

There are many strategies used when approaching the building of your groups. The importance of organization can’t be stressed enough. As with most programming techniques, developing a consistent system that you can use to approach the building of your groups, palettes, etc… will help you to develop more speed.

To start off with, let’s look at figure 2. This is a groups screen from the Cher tour. Figure 2 is my main groups screen where I would keep all of my most widely used groups. I’ll usually start off by creating some groups that will select all of a certain type of light. As you can see I’ll reserve sections of the screen for groupings of similar type. The all groups were created on the top row starting with the first button on the left. Next, I’ll cordon off areas of the screen for groups of a certain fixture type. If you’ll look at my main Studio Spot groups, you’ll notice that all groups pertaining to Studio Spots were organized into their own area, and likewise with Studio Colors. This helps me to find my groups when I need them without having to go searching for them.

Some of the groups I’ll create for my main groups screen are All of a truss (for each fixture type), and widely used groups such as band lights, and set lights. I usually approach this groups screen with whole sections of fixtures in mind. I’ll also reserve some space on this section for later on in the programming session when the designer starts finding interesting combinations of fixtures to use on specific areas. It’s vital that you keep your perception very sharp when it comes to the designers frequent use of certain selections of fixtures. If the designer finds an interesting combination of fixtures, record that as a group on your main group screen. This way you are able to keep up when frequently asked to make changes to this new selection.

The next type of group screen I use is a screen that further breaks down a specific type of light into more detailed, less used groups. If you take a look at figure 3, you’ll see how I’ve done this.

As you can see, I’ll still retain some all groups so I can quickly select them while in my more specific groups screen. I’ll also make single fixture groups and lay them out in a manner that will topographically resemble the rig. This helps me to pick out individual fixtures quickly when the designer requests them.

One of the very useful types of groups I create would include 4 random selections of your rig, each with different fixtures in them. These groups are used together to create random color, strobe, movement, and iris chases. I’ll also use them to offset timing from each other in cues and FX. This enables me to create some very complex looking randomly displaced fly-ins/outs on the fly and with ease. To create random groups, I’ll count how many fixtures exist in the rig and divide that number by 4 (for 4 groups). If I have 16 fixtures this would yield 4 fixtures per group (4 groups). I’ll then scratch down a little plot of the lights that I’m working with as illustrated in figure 4a. I’ll also draw a chart for me to use to construct my groups (Figure 4b).

I’ll then pick 4 fixture at a time, crossing them out of the plot and adding them to each column of my chart until I’ve crossed out all of my fixtures in the plot. I pay very close attention to how random these groups would be if measured against each other. I’ll stay away from symmetry or fixtures right next to each other in adjacent groups. This is just one of the many techniques I use to create groups.

When you first look at the plot, it’s important that you understand what the designer’s intent is for each lighting position. This will greatly aid in how you approach building your groups for that system. It’s easy to go a little overboard when building your groups, which can cause clutter consequently inhibiting your speed. Don’t worry about it, it’s not the end of the world if you need to create a more specific group in the future than originally anticipate. You can build it right there on the fly if you need. Just try to have a good amount of some of the more sensible and widely used groups. With time you’ll get more of a grasp of how many and what types of groups you should start off with.

If you have access to a console before hand, building groups is one of the many things you can program without having the system there. Jump on any opportunity to build things before hand so you can spent more time on focusing and building cues and effects.

Your position palette is a place where you can store pan and tilt information for quick access while programming your looks. Position palettes or preset focuses are one of the more delicate operations of palette building. A lot of strategy and consideration should be used during the building of your focuses. While used for quick access there is also another side focuses that should be considered while building them. A change made to a focus will also change all of the cues that used that focus. This is such a valuable tool to have because it allows you to update your whole show’s focus from venue to venue just by changing the preset focuses. This is especially useful for touring shows where the venue and the hang are usually different from day to day. The trick is to build preset focuses that can be used in many contexts with each other so they can be re-used without making your show look too static. You don’t want to build too many focuses or the integrity of your show’s focus will suffer from venue to venue due to lack of focusing time. On the other side of the coin you also don’t want to build too few focuses causing you to stop and make a focus each time the designer asks for one.

In most cases you should try to reference all of your cues to preset focuses, time providing. You should also maintain a high degree of organization while doing this. If things get out of hand and your focuses don’t get labeled and are strewn all over the place, take the time when you get a break to re-organize them.

In figure 5 you can see some of the focuses I built on Cher. Notice the way they are organized into there own rows illustrated on the right. I’ll start with some point focuses such as down center SR & SL, lifts and each row will encompass a different class of focuses such as washes, scenic elements, and aerial, fly-out focuses. Eventually I’ll use combinations of these focuses to quickly produce the overall focus of a look.

There are a couple of basic focuses you should always have. They would include a down center focus, where all the lights in your rig are focused on a down center mark. A mid center focus, an up center focus, a center wide tight wash, a full stage wash, an apron wash, cycs and set washes, and a high out as well as some aerial focuses. This would be a good start, from there it would be wise to focus some fixtures on obvious acting areas such as lifts, platforms, and any auxiliary stages. If there is a band build some band specials then build a full band wash using those specials.

If you have the time, build a couple of different types of each wash. For example, a full stage straight down wash and a full stage crossed wash. This will give you somewhere to go when you need to make a change.

One focus that’s good to have up your sleeve is a random focus. You might want to create a couple of versions of this focus i.e. random stage, random house, random house and stage, etc… Figure 6 is a random and stage focus. Whenever you’ve been building a lot of symmetrical looks, a random one is a nice departure from the norm and you’ll find that in the wee hours of the morning after programming all night, this focus can spark a new creative perspective on behalf of the designer. Pop it in every once in a while (not all the time) for

maximum effect.

Figure 6

Again, it’s imperative that you understand the intent the designer had when they specified each lighting position. Are there any special lighting positions that would merit the creation of a special focus? Are there any frequently used acting areas that you may be unaware of? These are the kinds of questions that you should be asking your lighting designer.

You don’t always need to include every fixture in every focus. If you do this then it will increase the time it takes to update your show when moved. When you are programming a touring show it can take a great deal of discipline not to go overboard on focuses. You should always be aware of the fact that you’re only going to get a couple of hours to focus this show and every time you add a new position you’re adding to your daily focusing time. When you start to reach the maximum threshold of too many focuses, you should delicately remind the designer when he or she wants to add a couple more variations to a focus that she’s goin to blow captain if I giver any more! You are the Scotty of this Enterprise and it’s your duty to make Kirk aware of any maximum thresholds your system may be reaching. Instead, offer an alternative focus to the original idea. Try different combinations of already exiting focuses to achieve the desired one. You’ll find that many times you’ll be able to create a desired non-existing focus out of 2 already existing focuses.

If your show is a permanent installation and if you have a good amount of setup time then by all means, spend more time in building a generous, well organized position palette. Since the show doesn’t have to be updated everyday you can benefit by having a large position palette. You should still exercise a certain degree of conservation. You’ll find that with a little craftiness, you won’t need a ton of focuses.

Before building your color palette, quickly review the color capabilities of your fixtures. Which ones have color wheels, how many? Do any of your fixtures have color mixing? What kinds of color modes can you put your fixtures in (snap, split, crossfade, m-speed)? These are factors that you should be aware of before building your color palette. This will help you organize your palette.

Once you’ve figured out all of the color capabilities of your fixtures you can start building your color palette based on your discoveries.

Figure 7 illustrates my standard color palette for color mixing units as well as color wheel units. The top 6 rows consist of my standard 60 color mixing colors and the 2 bottom rows encompass the color wheels. I’ll organize my color-mixing palette in chromatic shades creating about 5 shades of each color of the spectrum. I’ll then organize my color wheel colors below them in their own discreet rows.

When you build your color palette with color wheels, you should pay close attention to the order of the wheel. For every wheel, you should build that wheel’s white or open in the first slot of that row. The next color on that row should increment 1 color up on that wheel. For instance in figure 8, palette 81 white is the studio spot’s 1^st color in that row. If the very next color on the wheel would be yellow you should record palette 82 as yellow. You should repeat this process until you get to the end of the wheel. If you keep all of your wheels organized like this, you will easily be able to tell the designer which color is closest to the one you are currently in. This also helps you to determine what colors you would go through if you had to crossfade to a color on the other side of the wheel. The smoothest crossfade to a color on a color wheel is usually to the one right next door to the current color you are in. Contrasting colors can sometimes provide interesting color chases or conversely, be an obstacle wheel trying to smoothly crossfade from one color to another.

If your fixture has 2 or 3 color wheels, you should palletize each wheel into its own row making sure that you record only the values for that particular color wheel and do not include other color parameters in your designated wheel’s palettes. This would yield 2 or 3 rows of color wheel palettes that you could freely overlap and mix other colors from. When you do have more than one color wheel, you might want to consider mixing some other colors from both wheels combined and recording those colors in either a different row or into your color mixing palette. This will make accessing those mixed colors much faster when trying to recall them.

A couple of other variables to consider when building your color wheel palettes are to be sure that you are in the correct mode of the color wheel you are trying to palletize. Some color wheels have a few modes such as a mode that only allows you to quick snap from one color to another or one to gracefully roll from one color to another. Other modes include the enabling of the speed or m-speed functions of that color. These modes will exist in different ranges on that color wheel channel. When I go about building my color palette, I usually record all of my colors on the wheels in a mode that allows me to be able to roll from one color to another with the fade time of the cue. If I want to snap from one color to another, I can still do so, I just have to decrease the fade time or speed for that individual cue. Recording your color wheel colors in a mode that allows you to crossfade from one color to another gives you the best of both worlds, not to mention the added ability to roll into split colors.

A split color occurs when you move your color wheel to a spot in between 2 colors. This can be a very interesting look. You may find it very useful have a separate row just for color wheel split colors.

When you have more than one light with color wheels the question arises as to whether or not you want to have several rows of color wheel palettes, each for each wheel of each fixture. This is really a subjective matter due to the pros and cons of each scenario. If you merge all fixture type’s color wheel 1 wheels into the same row of buttons, you will save room. One of the techniques used to conserve space so that you don’t have to page around looking for colors or gobos, is to merge all similar wheels between fixture types into the same row of palettes. You would still adhere to the "recording of all wheel palettes in slot order" convention. You would just need to be able to label each button more that one color name. Some desks allow for more than one line of text to be entered into a label. If this is the case you can have each line of one of your merged color wheel palettes represent a different fixture type. This way one row of color wheel palettes could accommodate more than one fixture type so that multiple fixtures would share the same palette button, saving you room. The downside to this technique is when you are using active colors to select your fixtures. If you have a couple of different instrument types in the same color palette and that palette is a shared one with each fixture possessing it’s own color, when you go to select one of those fixtures by its color, you will select the other fixture as well. This can become frustrating. The downside to recording your colors for each fixture type in their own rows of palettes is that they can tend to take up much space. Paging around looking for a color every time the designer asks for one can take a lot of time.

So far we’ve talked about color wheel palettes let’s take a closer look at the color-mixing palette in figure 8.

Your color-mixing palette uses subtractive color mixing to yield a large range of colors. Most color mixing systems use 3 dichroic sets of variable leaves or disks in order to produce a color. These leaves are colored cyan, magenta, and yellow, the 3 primaries of the subtractive color mixing system. A combination of 2 of these leaves engaged to completely interrupt the beam path will yield fire red, congo blue, and green (very close to the subtractive color mixing systems secondary colors). To create any other colors in the spectrum you can vary the degrees of level given to each leaf which will consequently vary the amount of dichroic filter interrupting the beam path. Most useable colors reside within ranges of 1 leaf on its own or 2 leafs combined. Any more than 2 leafs at once yield strange and dirty colors.

The first color mixing colors that I’ll record in my color palette are the ones that are easiest to mix, the full primaries and secondary colors. To do this, I’ll select my color mixing fixtures and the first color I’ll record is full unadulterated magenta. I’ll record this color in the top right button of my screen. From there, I’ll roll in the cyan leaf in addition to the magenta. Any guesses which color this might mix? If you said congo you were correct. I’ll record the congo just under the magenta. Next I’ll completely roll out the magenta leaf and leave only the cyan leaf to be recorded. I’ll record cyan under the congo. Now I’ll add the yellow on top of the cyan which will mix a green. I’ll record the green just under the Cyan. If I take out the cyan leaf, I’ll leave only the yellow to be recorded under the green. This leaves me with just one more combination to record, which would be yellow plus magenta. This would mix a fire red. If you take a look at figure 8 you can see how the colors line up on the right side. From top to bottom wee have magenta, congo, cyan, green, yellow, and fire. To the left of these colors I’ll create about 5 lighter shades of each hue. When you combine 2 leafs such as cyan and yellow to mix a green, if you take the cyan out about 40% you will yield more of a yellow green or chartreuse. Instead, if you take out the yellow leaf 40% you will yield a blue green or turquoise. This demonstrates that with every combination you can have 2 possible hues of that color. When I organize my color palette, I’ll separate these 2 hues into 2 areas of the same row of palettes as illustrated in figure 8.

I’ll organize my color-mixing colors from darkest to lightest going left. It’s important that whatever organizational technique you come up with, you group similar shades of color together from darkest to lightest. When a designer asks for a color they rarely ask for it be the number of your palette, instead they’ll say "give me a blue-green". It’s then up to you to supply them with a blue-green. If they want a different blue-green, they’ll usually give you some indication as to whether they want a more or less saturated one or they’ll simply say "lighter" or "darker" and sometimes "bluer" or "greener". If your colors are organized chromatically and from darkest to lightest, it will be easy for you to keep up and finally produce the exact color the designer is looking for.

Your beam palette is where you keep all of your gobos, different iris sizes, frost level, strobe levels, zoom, and any other parameter that may fall into the beam parameter group. Like the color palette, you should know the capabilities of your fixtures beam characteristics inside and out before you determine to how to best create and organize your beam palette. Gobo, prism, frost and lens wheels can each have different modes residing within the ranges of their parameters. It’s up to you to find out what these modes are and to decide which modes of that parameter you are going to palletized.

Figure 9 illustrates the technique I use to lay out my beam palette. As you can see, all of my gobo wheel’s opens, and my strobe, iris, frost stops and clears all line up in a column on the left side of the screen. Each wheel as well as each parameter type has its own dedicated row of palettes starting with the first slot on those wheels.

Starting with beam 1, I record an "open all" beam palette. This enables me to quickly open all the parameters within the beam group of whatever fixtures I’m working with. Next to the open all, I’ll build an Iris open and closed as well as a couple beam sizes. If the instruments I’m working with have a lens focus or zoom parameter, I’ll include that information into my iris palette so that my iris looks will always have a crisp edge to them. On that same row, I’ve recorded a strobe open and closed as well as some preset strobe levels. Notice how I separated the strobe palettes from the iris palettes. If you have the space to play with, separating 2 palette types on the same row will help you to distinguish them from one another.

The next row down is where I’ll palletize my 1^st gobo wheel. Like color wheels, I’ll build my gobo wheel palettes in slot order starting with open. With gobo wheels, you might want to include lens focus and if your fixtures possess it, zoom. If you do include lens focus and zoom, your gobos will always be recalled sharp. If you want more subtle textures you can then throw them into a racked lens focus preset. It’s often that your fixture’s lens focus and zoom parameters will be slightly off from fixture to fixture. Tuning each fixtures lens focus and zoom to every gobo and recording those values in with the gobo palette will insure that all your gobos will be the same sharpness when their palettes are accessed. If your fixtures possess more than 1 gobo wheel, you should build separate rows of gobo palettes for each wheel as illustrated in figure 9.

If your fixtures posses rotating gobo wheels it’s important that you palletize different rotation speeds. Be sure you only record the rotational rate parameter into your palette, this way you’ll be able to freely combine the palettes for your gobo wheel(s) with your rotational rate to yield different speeds of rotation. When you build your rotating gobo or speed palette (whichever the channel responsible for direction of rotation exists), it may be more interesting to rotate your gobos in counter-opposing directions. I’ve found this contrast to be more visually appealing than the standard uni-directional gobo spin.

Other palettes to build include a row for frost levels, prism wheels, different zoom sizes, and lens focuses. Once you understand the logic behind building wheel type palettes such as gobo or color wheels, you can apply that logic to a myriad of palette types.

Once you’ve taken the time to build and organize your palettes, building looks becomes so much easier and quicker to accomplish. It’s now only a matter of assembling these pre-build elements together and recording your picture as a look. The better your organization, the quicker you’ll be at accessing these elements. Let’s take a glance at a few lighting looks to better understand how these palettes relate to a show. All of these looks were created with the palettes in the article.

In this look (figure 10), I started upstage with the studio colors washing the set. I added the circle studio colors to the stage in a center wide focus and colored them congo. Added to this were the floor and set Studio Colors in the floor fans position. They were colored with the loving amber color mixing color on the color palette. Finally I selected the B rear, E foh truss, and pod Studio Spot groups and put them in the shatter gobo on the beam palette. I put the B and E trusses in the house positions and the pods into the blitz positions and was finished. It took about 2 minutes to create this look.

The first thing I did to create this look (figure 11) was selected the B rear truss studio spots and put them into the set wash position, lava gobo, light blue color wheel. Next I added color to the circular trusses by selecting the all circle colors groups and putting them in the toners position then coloring them congo. I then selected the All Circle Spots group and put them into a Spiral position. Once I’ve added the pod spots group and put them in to the high out position, I’ll re-select the circles along with the pods and color and gobo them at the same time.

In this look (figure 12), the Side studio colors group was selected and put into the Shin Wash position. Added to this was the Set Studio Colors group in the down center position. Both of these groups were colored green. The floor Spots group was then put into the floor crosses position and colored yellow then put in the Blocks gobo. To add some top light, I selected the All circle Colors group and put them in the 3 points position. To finish the look, I colored them lav.

As you can see, even the most complex looks are comprised of these simple elements known as palettes, presets, and libraries. If you understand how to create palettes and organize them into a sensible interface, you will be able to assemble even the most complex of looks. Add timing, effects, and a cue structure to your knowledge and you’ll be on your way to programming a show.