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Designing a Light Show
#1
Here are some tips on how to build a great light show:

1) PLANNING - Planning is critical. If you just throw lights around your garden without much thought you can easily just end up with a bunch or random flashing lights. To avoid this take time to plan your display.
  • Grouping - Try to group features (such as tree, bushes, stars etc) into lines. By doing a chase down the line you introduce the sense of movement into your display. Lines of 3 or more work best. Ideally 6 or 8.
  • Colour - Use colour carefully. Use the same colours on all your features. If your budget allows put 2 or 3 colours on all features. This is something you can build up over the years. For example if you have a line of trees, wrap them all in white one year and then add red a following year. By having different colours on your features you can be very creative with colour by doing colour changes or muti-colour chases. It also makes for a good finale as you can turn all lights on in all colours at the end of a song.
  • Features - Try to plan in a few different features if your budget will allow. This will give you greater flexibility when sequencing your show and enable you to keep your viewers interest.
  • Be Selective - When designing your display don't try to do too much in one year. Light displays can take a lot of time to plan, sequence and setup. Start small and build on your display each year. Have a final idea of what you want in your display, and work on little bits each year.

2) SEQUENCING
  • Music - Choose music carefully. Some traditional UK Christmas songs are very repetitive and can come tedious to program and to watch. Go for music with frequent changes in beat, tempo etc. For can follow these changes with the lights and keep the viewers interest.  Watch other peoples videos for ideas on music etc. Music from TSO (Trans Siberian Orchestra) is very popular and great for using in light shows.
  • Use lights selectively - Do not use all your lights all the time. Keep the viewers interest by focusing attention on different parts of the display, changing to another part of the display whenever the rhythm of the music changes. On small displays this is difficult to achieve as you have limited lights to play with.
  • Try to capture the feel of the music - Use the lights and colors carefully to match the feel of the music. Think of your lights as the dancers on a stage and you are the choreographer.
  • Show Designer - Ensure that you setup your display items correctly to get the most from the Software. Many people do not use the grouping in the Show Designer correctly. Be sure to use the advanced mode, and rather than creating Window1, Window2, Window3 create a single Display Item group called Windows, which contains each of the windows as segments. You can then quickly create chases around the windows, or turn all windows on in one color by using the top grid in the Show Designer. You can still control each window separately by using the bottom grid.
  • Timing - Be sure to get your timings in the Show Designer spot on. Tap out the beats using the 'Beat Insertion tool' and then align your events to these beats. You can shuffle events left and right or change the duration using the toolbar or shortcut keys (CTRL LEFT, CTRL RIGHT, CTRL+, CTRL-).
Hope these few pointers help.

Craig.
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