One of the things that took me a while to get used to in film is they never want to see a light at an intensity without the CCT having been input first.  So even when a gaffer says “Give me that light at 50%”, you’re supposed to wait until they tell you “4300” before doing anything.  I haven’t checked this in other consoles, but in Eos, it’s disappointing that you can’t put and intensity value and a color palette on the same command line and expect it to do both.  It will accept the command:

101 at 50 Color Palette 3200

But it will only do the intensity.  I’ve also tried putting Intensity directly on the command line:

101 Intensity 50 Color Palette 3200

And again, it only does the intensity.  I remember from teaching that you can put as many palettes on one command line as you like.  So though this is probably too far to go for such a simple task, you could solve the one command line issue by creating intensity palettes…specifically Absolute Intensity Palettes.

If you’re not already familiar with absolute palettes, it’s creating a reference (the intensity palette) that gets recalled as absolute data.  Let’s do an example.

101 at 25 enter.  

101 Shift . (Command line shows Minus Cells) Record Intensity palette 25 By Type Enter.  You can see the Master is captured in the Intensity palette, but not the cells. 

If I sneak Enter and then type 101 Intensity Palette 25 enter, it looks exactly the same.  So let’s double tap Intensity Palette to go to Intensity Palette Blind.

You can see I already did an example here on the 50 palette.  If you touch the empty area below Absolute in line with IP 25, Absolute will show up.  Go ahead and do that. 

Hit Live to go back to Live, then Sneak Enter to release manual values.  Now type:

101 Intensity Palette 25 enter. 

You see that it has the data, but it isn’t wrapped in the intensity palette “package”.  I’m going to sneak enter and try the command with a color palette.

101 Intensity Palette 25 Color Palette 3200 Enter. 

Finally, intensity and a color palette on the same command line!

Is this too far to go for such a small benefit?  Only you can decide.  You’d obviously have to make Intensity palettes for each fixture type in your rig.  I’d make intensity palettes from 5% to 100% in five point increments.  I’ve never had anyone make their first intensity value for a light 37% or 21%.  Yes, we may get there eventually, but never to start.  I’m going to try this out on my next film and see what I think.

Any little syntax things that drive you crazy like this obviously has me?  Hit me in the comments.

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film and television based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE, an ETC Eos trainer and an enthusiastic trainer of many other platforms and subjects.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.